Servitization in Support of Sustainable Cities: What Are Steel’s Contributions and Challenges?
1
European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme, Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowship Actions in Excellent Research, AdaptEconII Project, Clermont-Ferrand 63000, France
2
Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Développement International (CERDI), Université Clermont-Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand 63000, France
3
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Iceland, Reykjavik 107, Iceland
4
Industrial Bioeconomy Chair, NEOMA Business School, Campus Reims 51100, France
5
Institute of Ecological Economics, Ukrainian National Forestry University, Lviv 79057, Ukraine
6
Department of Environmental Management, American University of Central Asia, Bishkek 79057, Kyrgyzstan
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2019, 11(3), 855; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030855
Received: 3 January 2019 / Revised: 23 January 2019 / Accepted: 31 January 2019 / Published: 7 February 2019
(This article belongs to the Section Environmental Sustainability and Applications)
In the pursuit of eco-efficiency, resilience, and self-sufficiency, sustainable cities focus on long-term environmental goals instead of only short-term economic ones. To do so, many of them rely on servitization, the practice of replacing tangible solutions for intangible ones. Considering steel’s wide range of applications and its pervasive presence, this article’s goal was twofold: Not only to understand how servitization helps sustainable cities, but also the contributions and challenges of the steel present in service-providing. To do so, the criteria of sustainable urban metabolism and circles of sustainability were used to analyze three case studies of servitization: energy, housing, and mobility. The results showed that servitization can provide significant benefits to sustainable cities, while also being able to substantially alter the supply-side dynamics of steelmaking by affecting, most notably, demand. This brought to light how important it is for steelmakers to pay close attention to the service-providing initiatives that may concern their clients and products. Nevertheless, further research is necessary to fully understand all of the effects that servitization can have on all of the commodities involved in its implementation.
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Keywords:
servitization; sustainable cities; steel; circles of sustainability; sustainable urban metabolism
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MDPI and ACS Style
Pinto, J.T.M.; Morales, M.E.; Fedoruk, M.; Kovaleva, M.; Diemer, A. Servitization in Support of Sustainable Cities: What Are Steel’s Contributions and Challenges? Sustainability 2019, 11, 855. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030855
AMA Style
Pinto JTM, Morales ME, Fedoruk M, Kovaleva M, Diemer A. Servitization in Support of Sustainable Cities: What Are Steel’s Contributions and Challenges? Sustainability. 2019; 11(3):855. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030855
Chicago/Turabian StylePinto, Julian T.M., Manuel E. Morales, Mariia Fedoruk, Marina Kovaleva, and Arnaud Diemer. 2019. "Servitization in Support of Sustainable Cities: What Are Steel’s Contributions and Challenges?" Sustainability 11, no. 3: 855. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030855
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