Cities’ activities in the twenty-first century pose threats to attaining sustainable development, which has led many countries to establish circular cities as a starting point for developing circularities. While many papers cover countries’ CE activities, few studies explore how the circular city concept can be practiced and how a city is transitioning from a linear to a circular economy. As a major industrial country, China is already beginning to capture circular economy opportunities through the circular city approach of resource-looping. Resource-looping is fundamental to circular transformation until cities become sustainable and competitive. This paper introduces the critical dimensions of resource-looping (e.g., reuse, remanufacturing, recycling, and recovery) and explores how CE resource-looping practices are implemented in Wenzhou, a powerhouse in China’s industrial landscape, as an example. This study recognizes the city’s CE initiatives’ progress and its jurisdictions (e.g., district, counties, and county-level cities). It highlights the collaboration of municipal government and businesses to generate practical projects to achieve circularity. The present study thus makes novel contributions to the literature on circular urban development and practical solutions to achieve circularity through government and business collaboration.

Author: Han-Chiang Ho

Published in: World Congress on Sustainable Technologies (WCST-2024)

• Date of Conference: 4-6 November 2024
• DOI: 10.20533/WCST.2024.0018
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-77-8
• Conference Location: St Anne’s College, Oxford University, UK