About this Handbook
This section addresses the what, why, for who, how and when and where of the Handbook.
What is this handbook?
This Handbook is a practical resource to assist cities in adopting circular economy strategies focused on co-creation methodologies in a practical, intuitive and easy to implement way. The REFLOW Handbook aims to be a useful guide for information, tools and other types of materials that can support you and your city to start a transition towards a more sustainable, inclusive and thriving city.
The REFLOW handbook will support the pilot cities in Amsterdam, Berlin, Cluj-Napoca, Milan, Paris and Velje-- and the local consortium-- to easily find all the tools necessary to implement the REFLOW methodology developed by the project's consortium partners.
This document is a a living resource, which will be constantly fed by the experimentation and co-creation processes that will be happening throughout the project’s duration.
Why a handbook?
The complexity of urban innovation needs adaptive and dynamic tools for organisations, governments and citizens to be able to test and experiment at different scales - neighborhoods, districts, city scale, peri-urban scale, etc. In a constantly changing reality, we also need tools that are able to adapt and that can provide updated and validated information and resources, in an open source fashion. As such, this Handbook provides both REFLOW’s pilot cities and other interested cities with access to an updated repository of tools, methods and metrics, to embrace the transition towards a more circular and regenerative urban model.
Who is this handbook intented for?
The REFLOW Handbook supports the pilot cities of the project; i.e. Amsterdam, Berlin, Cluj-Napoca, Milan, Paris and Vejle and their local partners. As the project comes to a close, it will also become available to any city interested in transitioning-- or in any step of the transition process-- to a more circular and regenerative city. The Handbook is generally written in a way that is meant to be accessible to a wide range of stakeholders, no matter their background.
How can this handbook be used?
This Handbook currently hosts different insights and possibilities connected to the project’s base elements. The information is meant to inspire pilots and external cities and help them initiate the transition to a more circular and regenerative city. You are encouraged to use this information to develop sound, strategic urban frameworks and action plans to approach the circular economy and then use the Handbook’s forthcoming tools and indicators to evaluate what is relevant or not to your city’s context, adapting frameworks to suit your city’s unique strengths and opportunities.
The Handbook is not planned as a stand-alone resource: it will interact with the different elements and outputs of the project. As the project evolves-- and more insights and tools become available-- this relationship will be further defined. While the current iteration extensively explores urban governance, having a basic overview of each of the project’s elements (see “About the REFLOW Project”) before reading the Handbook in depth will help you contextualise your city and its current status in the transition process. As the elements are highly interdependent and interconnected, being familiar with each one first will help you to link learnings and approaches later on. When reading through and exploring the Handbook’s different insights, we invite you to reflect on your city’s practices and pinpoint which strategies could contribute to reinforcing your own local initiative.
This Handbook is a practical guide conceived to be easily navigated. We have structured the content so that you can read it in consecutive order, or go directly to certain content, depending on where in the transition process your city is. Finally, sections are written in a didactic style to help clearly guide you.
Where will be used?
This Handbook is initially a tool for the six REFLOW pilots for the project duration (2019-2022). Ideally, a city at any point in the transition process will be able to take advantage of this resource.
When will be used?
This is an evolving online version of the Handbook, including basic information for your transition to a circular city. This is an iterative document that can be used and updated both by the pilot cities and other actors outside REFLOW project.
This handbook is based on the Fab City Handbook:
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