In this colloquium, I aim to challenge contemporary circular city and urban services planning models, which currently are not equipped to harness the full potential of interconnected neighborhoods for replenishing a city, its people, and its constituent economies and service territories.
Drawing upon prior and ongoing place-based collaborative research into the circular economy and urban services provision in the UK, Europe, USA and Asia, I introduce the considered concept and key elements of an interconnected neighborhood(s) city. This concept refers to how residual and/or hitherto dormant circular economic services (e.g. repair, reuse, recycling, etc.) and attendant flows of people, materials, goods and services within and between urban districts can be harnessed, repurposed and redesigned to stimulate socially sustainable and environmentally resilient forms of urban living.
By approaching city neighborhoods and their inhabitants, businesses and host services as relational, emergent and interconnected socio-territorial systems, human-centred urban service design can help to unlock the value propositions of improved accessibility, wayfinding, circularity and interconnectivity through regenerative and redistributive urban services provision models and replenishable place-making interventions.