Placing cities in the circular economy: neoliberal urbanism or spaces of socio-ecological transition?

The last decade has seen the adoption of the imaginary of a circular economy (CE) by cities. To date, much of the debate has been technical in orientation, making that the implications of the CE for urban theory and praxis have hitherto not been explored in great depth. ThisDebates and Interventions contribution collects work from diverse disciplinary quarters and geographical contexts, documenting the CE as an emerging alternative space of urban politics and praxis albeit constrained by neoliberal urbanism. The selected contributions show that circular strategies constitute a ‘spatial fix’ marrying capital accumulation with the rising environmental challenges at the urban scale, hence reproductive of the splintered urbanism that mark contemporary neoliberal cities. At the same time, it appears the CE can be embedded in value systems that challenge neoliberal urbanism, opening spaces for a socio-ecological transition that the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has made more urgent than ever.