Designing Transformative Urban Systems for Climate-Resilient, Circular and Community-Centred Cities

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change is not only a global challenge, but one deeply rooted in the real everyday life of people and communities. The current linear and fossil-based economic model is primarily responsible for the negative impacts of climate change, as it has evolved based on the use of conventional fossil energy sources. Within urban systems, this model has shaped patterns of resource use, spatial organization, and social relations, contributing not only to environmental degradation but also to growing social disparities. It has also “produced” a prevailing mindset centred on individual interests, increasingly ignoring the general interest and common good. This approach has strongly influenced urban development and planning processes, meaning they are traditionally based on linear models and oriented toward optimizing profit and production rather than long-term resilience, social equity, and environmental quality.

Reconnecting climate and environmental science with the daily experiences, habits, and lifestyles of people and communities is essential, working to foster collective awareness and systemic, integrated ways of thinking and acting towards sustainable quality of life and human and social development. Cities, understood as complex and interdependent urban systems, represent a critical scale at which climate resilience, circular (tangible and intangible) resource management, and community wellbeing intersect and can be jointly addressed.

This Special Issue explicitly focuses on integrated urban systems approaches aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, where climate resilience, circularity, and community-centred development are treated as interdependent pillars of urban transformation. It is grounded in a regenerative and circular economy perspective inspired by nature’s symbiotic circular model of organization, enabling cities to regenerate by transforming both material and immaterial waste into resources while reinforcing social, cultural, and ecological relationships among people, places, and ecosystems. Within this framework, the circular city paradigm promotes not only material efficiency but also immaterial values, linking climate action to social equity, wellbeing, and cultural identity.

The Special Issue proposes a circular and integrated approach  to rethinking cities as integrated cultural, social, and environmental laboratories capable of addressing climate change through place-based and community-driven urban system transformations. This implies that effective climate mitigation and adaptation strategies must be genuinely people-centred and, more precisely, community-centred and embedded within local urban systems in order to improve the wellbeing of individuals and their communities while ensuring that “no one is left behind,” in line with the commitments of the 2030 Agenda. This perspective also applies to effective, balanced, and wellbeing-centred urban planning, in which climate resilience strategies are combined with urban greening, enhancement of environmental quality (air, water, soil), and the protection and adaptive reuse of natural, historical, and cultural heritage.

The Special Issue welcomes theoretical, methodological, and, in particular, empirical and applied studies that explore how the integration of climate resilience, circularity, and community engagement can be operationalized within urban systems. Contributions adopting transdisciplinary approaches are especially encouraged. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, urban regeneration and climate-resilient neighbourhoods; circular and polycentric city models; adaptive reuse of cultural heritage within circular and low-carbon strategies; innovative, participatory, and multi-level governance approaches; and evaluation and decision-support tools that enable community-centred, climate-responsive, and culturally grounded urban system transformations.

Prof. Dr. Luigi Fusco Girard
Dr. Martina Bosone
Dr. Francesca Nocca
Guest Editors

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• circular economy
• circular city
• climate-resilient city
• cultural heritage
• community-centred development
• integrated urban planning
• multidimensional evaluation processes