Abstract
Urbanization causes massive flows of construction materials and waste, which generates environmental impacts and land-use conflicts. Circular economy strategies at a local scale and in coordination with urban planning could respond to those issues. Implementing these strategies raises challenges as it requires a better knowledge of flows and their space-differentiated drivers. This article focuses on the case of the Paris region (Ile-de-France) in 2013. Construction materials inflows and outflows to and from anthropogenic stocks of buildings and networks are estimated and located though a bottom-up approach based on the collection and processing of geolocalized data. Flow analysis focuses on the relationship between urbanization and flows with a view to establishing context-specific circular economy strategies. Results show that regional inflows of construction materials to stocks in 2013 reach between 1.8 and 2.1 t/capita while outflows are between 1.0 and 1.5 t/capita. Both inflows and outflows are mainly driven by building construction and demolition as well as by road renewal. The region is composed of three sub-urban areas and flows per capita in the dense central city of Paris are significantly lower than in the low-density outskirt area of Grande Couronne (GC). Road renewal accounts for a larger share of flows in GC. Future research will address methodological limits.
Highlights
Both inflows and outflows are mainly driven by building construction and demolition as well as by road renewal
This study aims at better understanding the relationship between urbanization and construction material flows with a view to establishing circular economy strategies which are coordinated with urban planning
We propose to use the framework defined by Circle Economy and colleagues [12] in Section 1.2 to outline insights for the definition of a circular economy strategy in the Paris region based on results from our material flow analysis
Summary
Issues Related to Urbanization and Construction Material Flows. Urbanization is one of the main drivers of global resource demand. Cities account for more than three-quarters of the world’s material and energy consumption [1,2]. Construction materials form the most important inflows into cities and emissions to the natural environment [3]. Their consumption increased tenfold from 1950 to 2005 [3] and could double again until 2060 compared to 2011 [4]. Ninety percent of the world’s material consumption comes from natural resources
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