The Chair and Institute for Urban Design of RWTH Aachen University joins an 18-month Interreg North-West Europe project, ASSET, to help accelerate the transition to a circular built environment for the Eurodelta.
A cross-sector consortium of 11 partners and over 30 associated partners has come together to explore the spatial implications of a circular built environment (CBE) in the Eurodelta – a historically strong, economically related area that covers the Rhine, Scheldt and Meuse delta conurbations (including the Randstad, Brussels and Rhine-Ruhr area).
A circular economy is one of the primary goals of the EU Green Deal and translates as an economy that promotes value maintenance and sustainable development. In a circular economy, the ‘end of life’ concept has been replaced with new concepts like reducing, reusing, recycling, and recovering of materials throughout the supply chain.
The so-called ASSET project, which stands for ‘Spatial Strategy for the Eurodelta, boosting a circular builT environment’, will focus its attention on how to transition into a circular built environment, since the built environment is responsible for 40 per cent of CO2 emissions across the Eurodelta.
A circular built environment (CBE) is a system designed to narrow, slow, and close resource loops at different spatial-temporal levels by transitioning cultural, environmental, economic and social values towards a sustainable way of living. However, the spatial requirements – how much land and where it is located – of a CBE are still unknown.
By using the Province of South Holland’s Spatial Circular strategy as the base of its research, the project will seek to find out what cities need to develop a spatial-economic strategy for the circular transition, and whether cooperation across regions can accelerate these efforts.
ASSET is funded by Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) and will run for 18-months from November 2023, bringing together an alliance of experts and students on circularity, economics, planning and mobility from the public and private sectors throughout the Eurodelta.
The project will raise awareness, create additional capacity and discover technological innovations and capabilities within the Eurodelta.
For more information visit Home | ASSET (nweurope.eu)
More information
Dagmar Keim – City of Amsterdam, project lead (d.keim@amsterdam.nl)
Dr. Fabio Bayro Kaiser – RWTH Aachen University (bayrokaiser@staedtebau.rwth-aachen.de)
