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FIVE STEPS TO GET YOUR FAB CITY STARTED WITH THE CARTOGRAPHY TOOLKIT

By definition, cartography is the science and art dedicated to the drawing of maps. Now, it is time to rediscover the skill of doing Cartography. Rather than looking at far-away places, we want to encourage you to look at your own community with new eyes.

In five steps, you can become a cartographer of your hometown, neighbourhood or region and its resources. For each step, you have access to resources and templates to help you along the way.

Not sure why you should get started with our Cartography toolkit? Read our case studies as an inspiration.

UNDERSTAND YOUR ECOSYSTEM

Before you get started

Ask yourself if you are interested in establishing a flourishing and productive community of citizens, makers, designers, and other ventures that promote circular innovation? A community that enables local production of valuable goods your city needs to thrive. The Cartography toolkit can get you closer to this goal!

But before we get there, let's start by understanding what circularity truly means for your neighbourhood or city. What local challenges do you need to overcome to create a thriving urban environment? As the facilitator of circular innovation communities, it's important to have a comprehensive understanding of the context of your urban ecosystem.

So, what can you do? Your first step is to use the urban ecosystem mapping template to determine whether your city or neighbourhood is within the safe boundaries of local social and ecological parameters. We have created a comprehensive workshop sheet to help you map your urban baseline. You will dive into waste generation data, explore land use change around your city, discover sources of water stress and become an ethnographer who learns about the culture of your neighbourhood. Don't worry - this workshop is designed to be a work-in-progress and you can return to it at any time.

Resources & materials

Urban Ecosystem Mapping Workshop (MIRO template or as an offline workshop kit )

A workshop based on the idea of planetary boundaries to map potential ecological overshoots and social shortcomings of your neighbourhood

BECOME A CONTEXT DETECTIVE

Mapping your context

There are so many different ways we can learn about the true realities, challenges and assets of our community. Some require expert knowledge or inaccessible data, such as statistics on your community or private data on companies and their wastes. But that should not deter you from diving deeper into the challenges you have identified on your Urban Challenges Map (see Step 1). Anyone can be a data detective with the right mindset.

Adopting a detective-mindset means following different clues to build up a better picture of your community's local context. Sometimes this means visiting your city's data portals or strategy documents and discovering whether your first findings about your city's social and ecological health are right. Other times, a quick search for scientific literature might reveal social or ecological studies that might surprise you. And last but not least, it is often worth collecting your own data if official sources do not lead you anywhere.

During this step, return to the Urban Ecosystems Workshop to dive deeper into the eight themes: Materials, Water, Biodiversity, Climate, Culture, Economic Inclusion, Society and Health and Wellbeing. You'll now focus on Part 3 & 4 of the workshop board you already started in Step 1.

Resources & materials

Urban ecosystem mapping workshop (Step 3-4)
(MIRO template or offline workshop kit)

A workshop based on the idea of planetary boundaries to map potential ecological overshoots and social shortcomings of your neighbourhood

MAP YOUR (FUTURE) CIRCULAR ECONOMY

The first steps to a thriving,
productive community

With a better knowledge on the context of your local community, you can start identifying those actors who are or should be part of a circular community that, together, solves the urban challenges you have identified. Who you include in your mapping efforts is dependent on the type of circular community you would like to facilitate.

A circular ecosystem can be any group of actors that collaborate to, together, achieve the goal of a circular economy. But we can distinguish a few general types circular ecosystems. For example, a knowledge ecosystem exchange knowledge and skills, while an industrial ecosystem might consist of several physical exchanges of waste streams, energy or materials. Check out an overview of these types to get a better sense of the type of ecosystem that might most closely reflect your goals.

Once you are ready to map your stakeholders, download our stakeholder mapping template to store data. This template is designed to be linked to KUMU - a mapping software that allows you to easily create stakeholder maps, both spatially or not. A full guide to KUMU is also ready for you.

Resources & materials

Getting started with KUMU (pfd guide)

Stakeholder mapping template (excel)

KUMU Blueprint (JSON file)

INVENTORY RESOURCES IN YOUR COMMUNITY

Mapping local resources, skills and knowledge

Once you have made a good start to identify the organisms of your ecosystem, such as makers, manufacturers, initiatives or institutions, the true work begins. What are the resources you have available in your network that are currently not used at their full potential. Take stock of all the wastes that local manufacturers produce if you want to identify possible industrial synergies. Which circular skills do local businesses, designers or schools already cultivate? Which spaces, infrastructure and machines do manufacturers have that could be shared or used to produce knowledge on recycling, reuse or recovery of materials.

To start making your local inventory of resources, you will need to get in touch with your stakeholders. Interview them, survey them or simply have a conversation with them. Guides and templates are available to help you to get an idea of what to look out for. However you collected your answers, store them in your stakeholder spreadsheet's resource inventory section.

Resources & materials

Resource mapping survey template
(google forms)
Resource mapping survey template (words)

WEAVE CONNECTIONS

Circular symbioses around Fab Cities

Fab City Hubs are physical or virtual spaces of where local circular innovation communities can coalesce, learn from each other or experiment with the reuse or recovery of urban waste streams. They can be living labs, places of skills exchange and demonstrators of circular flows.

Spotting specific opportunities for local circular value chains is where things become exciting. It is an art to find circular opportunities that (i) emerge from your stakeholders' already existing resources, (ii) respond to challenges of your area and (iii) are technically and economically feasible. While there is no cookie-cutter approach for finding circular opportunities, the opportunity explorer tool and workshop templates can help you (and your team) to reflect on your mapping efforts to far and explore ideas for circularity. Ideally, your key stakeholders are already part of this session!

If you need to first take a step back and discuss with your stakeholders which role they can or already do play in a circular ecosystem, use our Roles in the Circular Economy Workshop to get everyone on the same page.

Once you have a few key ideas for circular projects and opportunities, don't stop here! Take action, form working groups and round tables to keep your conversations going.

Resources & materials

Roles in the Circular Economy (MIRO template)

Finding Circular Opportunities (MIRO template)
Opportunity Explorer (KUMU)

Circular Maker Library (KUMU)

Step 3

EXPLORE HOW PILOT CITIES HAVE APPLIED THESE STEPS

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This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No. 869595

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