Re-design of industry parks for a circular transition of the built environment

This PhD research is part of the overarching project ‘Regenerating Flemish Industry Parks’ (REFLIP). REFLIP focuses on Flemish industry parks, mostly dating from the 1960s - and requiring major spatial and infrastructural updates. As construction and demolition waste constitutes 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. The first goal of the project is to coproduce phased quantified future circularity visions and development strategies for two existing Flemish industry parks. Secondly, it aims to generate process frameworks to implement these visions through planning tools and policy interventions in practice. Finally, the research aims to develop quantitative tools that increasingly absorb contextual specificities. This specific research within the REFLIP project titled ‘Re-design of industry parks for a circular transition of the built environment’ (PhD2) approaches the objectives by using explorative design, analylizing both sites within their multi-scalar and multi-dimensional (spatial and non-spatial) contexts and developing scenarios for their circular transformation. Concrete outputs are an evolving graphic atlas feeding phased quantified future circularity visions and development strategies for two existing Flemish industry parks in their multi- scalar contexts. In this way, design thinking as an iterative process redefines the problems and structures the overall research to enable an integrated approach.