Urban Waste Landscape and Inclusive Community Management: A Case Study on Hong Kong

An inclusive city provides new perspectives for the transition to urban sustainability, with an emphasis on the adaptation of an equilibrium of economic efficiency, environmental responsibility, and social justice. This paper investigates how the circular economy strategy can be better applied in cities on the basis of the perspectives of waste landscape and inclusive community management (relevant facilities and infrastructures), in order to support a more inclusive urban waste management. We begin by conceptualizing the urban system into three boundaries, (1) general geography (GG) representing the overall urban planning scope, such as land use, infrastructure planning, and facility location; (2) physical geography (PG) representing the urban metabolism in terms of material and energy flows; and (3) human geography (HG) representing the socioeconomic activities and agents that acted as the metabolism agents. We further developed a location-based inventory for waste generation based on the statistical data on population, economic outputs, and waste generation by categories, as well as geospatial data including population distribution, land use, housing shapes, and nightlight data. Based on the waste landscape analysis, further inclusive waste management and policy implications are discussed and proposed.