Circularity assessment of the built environment of industry parks in Flanders

Flemish industry parks, mostly dating from the 1960s, require major spatial and infrastructural updates. As construction and demolition waste constitute about one fourth of all waste, integrated circularity transition of these built environments is key. The REFLIP research project addresses the need to develop multi- and transdisciplinary methods to realize an integrated circular economy transition of the built environment. It examines how built environment transition processes can become (more) circular as a multidimensional ‘wicked’ problem. It mobilizes iterative design, life cycle environmental impact assessment, social impact analysis, operations research, and scenario thinking to bridge complementary disciplines and currently largely disconnected data-levels. More specifically, REFLIP focuses on the built environment of two Flemish industry parks and investigates the potential of circular regeneration of Flemish industry parks, considering the existing terrain and buildings as resources. As such, the research approaches circularity of the built environment in a representative yet ‘simple’ way: construction material flows and industry parks as material stocks. Three PhD projects are integrated within the REFLIP project. This PhD research focuses on the assessment part, integrating various existing indicators from circular building and logistics with social and context based information from the other two PhD’s. The PhD researcher will be responsible for developing a framework to assess circularity of the built environment of industry parks, applying the framework to two existing Flemish parks and assessing various circular transition scenarios of both parks.