Integrated Local Strategies for Global Resources Management: A Circular Urban Hub Prototype

The current globalization scenario highlights a unprecedent convergence in interdependence linked to the Earth's limited resources. Statistics reveal a significant increase in resource extraction and utilization over the past six years, with relevant environmental implications. Governmental organizations, and notably the European Union, react to a such growing pressure implementing policies and strategies inspired to circular business model. This latter is aimed at reducing the deployment of global resources and GHG emission due to human activity by the systemic design approach, that is the way for managing the matter flows from one system to the others, linking together different processes and operations within innovative supply-chains, involving social systems. This contribution presents the early outcomes of the EU SWICH-ASIA project-The 3Rs for a sustainable use of natural resources in Ulaanbaatar (3R4UB), starting from the masterplan planning activity for managing waste streams in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Specifically, the focus goes to the circular design of an urban HUB, a mobile prototype characterized by adaptability, flexibility, and modularity. The hub is conceived as an emerging eco-socio-technical infrastructure for engaging people in implementing technocycles such as reuse, repair, re-design, and upcycling, adapting to the emerging needs of society and the surrounding territories. In this way, the hub works as a social infrastructure for transferring practices and knowledge of new forms of circular economies, acting as an engine for the production of services and spaces for daily life within a framework of best practices aimed at resource maximization and self-sufficiency.