A circular Europe on the way
Silvia Barbero
This volume aims at clarifying the role of the circular economy according to sustainable development and how policymakers can target it effectively in their activities.
The main question is: Which methodology can policy managers use in order to define a clear path towards a circular economy in their regions?
Indeed, this path means shifting from a linear and mechanistic approach to a holistic and integrated one, where the number of variables and relations generates a complex environment. So, the policies should manage and solve complex problems with new structured innovation approaches compared to the past. Specifically, systemic design provides specific tools, from managing complex situations to designing new relations among the entities of territory to visualizing the hidden potentialities and boosting proactive collaboration among local actors.
This book is a guide to systemic design as a key methodology to establish sustainable regional action plans towards a circular economy. As the result of an intense dialogue between people who present different perspectives and seek a common language in the current complexity of policy-making and designing, this is the first of a three-book series published across a four-year period (2016–2020) as part of the RETRACE Project funded by the Interreg Europe Programme.
Related Paper: Systemic Design & Policy Making: The Case of the Retrace Project
RSD7 featured relaxed “learning-and-doing time”. At the end of each day, three events were hosted in the casual venue of Eataly. This is one of the recently published books that was introduced to the audience and discussed in an informal setting.