Urban Reconomy: sharing for circular resource efficiency

The aim of this project is to advance knowledge about urban sharing and collaborative production schemes and their potential contribution to resource efficient economy in cities: Urban Reconomy. This project is of multidisciplinary nature as it conflates sustainability and organisational studies in urban contexts with institutional entrepreneurship. This study responds to Formas’ priority for multidisciplinary work promoting sustainable development in city planning with focus on social and environmental research.

Cities are seen as one of the leading forces to transform our societies into sustainable and resource efficient. The latest trends of sharing “stuff, space, skills, and time” and collaborative production that are fast entering urban lives are often advocated as sustainable. However, their potential contribution to resource efficiency and circular economy has not been systematically evaluated.
This multidisciplinary project aims to advance Urban Reconomy by analysing how sharing and collaborative production schemes are organised, what is their contribution to circular economy and how it can be harnessed through innovative institutional constellations and entrepreneurial processes in diverse urban contexts.
The questions will be explored by combining theoretical insights from institutional entrepreneurship and product-service systems. Empirically the study will develop 6 in-depth cases in Malmö, Copenhagen and Helsinki and 6 snap-shot case studies from London, Berlin and Barcelona. They will include in-depth interviews with case stakeholders, participant observation, desk-top studies and expert focus groups. The project aims to contribute to the field of institutional entrepreneurship and to advance the societal goal of building a resource efficient Europe.