Urban communities play a critical role in achieving sustainability overall. They are where most of the world’s population lives, and they comprise high concentrations of services, consumption, and waste. To date urban communities rely heavily on surrounding peri-urban and rural areas to sustain their highly concentrated levels of consumption and waste. This displacement of resourcing and sink functions represents an unsustainable pattern of urbanization that accelerates the decline of global ecosystems services rather than supporting them through the compensatory contributions of peri-urban and rural areas. Yet how can urban communities be more sustainable and reduce the burden they pose to their surrounding areas? The answer lies in re-envisioning our cities as circular systems that serve as exemplars of a re-embedded circular economy where supply chains are re-embedded in their local and regional context, emissions and waste are reduced, and remaining waste products serve as resources for connected product cycles. This kind of circular economy takes its cue from nature rather than from industrial throughput models. The task of re-envisioning urban communities as circular and embedded has gained particular urgency in light of the recent global health crisis that has highlighted the vulnerabilities of the current dis-embedded model of urbanization. This special issue explores the opportunities and challenges urban communities face, as they are re-envisioned as circular systems embedded in their diverse and complex social and environmental contexts. We invite contributions that envision sustainable solutions for urban infrastructure, food and water security, human services, ecosystems services, governance, and quality of life related arrangements that improve the sustainability and resilience of urban communities.
Keywords: urban sustainability; urban resilience; circular economy; re-embedding; environmental sustainability; economic sustainability; social sustainability.