The Urban Living Lab as Tool for Introducing Circularity in the Everyday Life of Vulnerable Neighbourhoods: Case-study Kerkrade-West, the Netherlands.

Making circularity matter in Kerkrade-West

In this paper, we ask how circularity can become meaningful in a neighbourhood where daily concerns are already urgent. Discussions about the circular economy often focus on material flows, technology and business models. In Kerkrade-West, where physical, social, economic and cultural challenges come together, we started somewhere else: with people’s experience of livelihood, belonging and the shared spaces around them.

Our research followed a three-year Urban Living Lab cycle from 2016 to 2018. Zuyd University of Applied Sciences brought residents, municipal and housing partners and multidisciplinary student groups together in intensive design workshops. Before developing proposals, we studied the area’s social and cultural history, patterns of use and underuse, and the barriers affecting how people move through the neighbourhood. That groundwork helped us look for forms of reuse that were both place-specific and feasible.

Public space as a circular starting point

We made public space central because it lowers the threshold of an idea that can otherwise feel distant. Circularity is often associated with household recycling or specialist supply chains. In Kerkrade-West, it could also be explored through shared places that enable meeting, exchange, reuse and adaptation over time. A vintage boulevard, for example, linked refurbished goods to flexible public-space programming. Along Akerstraat, modular units were designed to move and change in response to feedback from older residents, young people and families.

For us, social value is not an extra benefit after an environmental intervention. It is part of what makes circular practice workable. When residents help set the questions, circularity can support local identity, social cohesion and shared responsibility for care and maintenance. The proposals in this study remained at the design stage, but the workshops themselves created a space where local knowledge, student experimentation and institutional priorities could meet.

Our message to cities is simple: an environmentally sound concept will not be adopted only because it is technically convincing. In neighbourhoods dealing with poverty, insecurity or weak social ties, sustainability has to become visible through improvements in everyday surroundings. Urban Living Labs can help make that connection, turning circularity from a broad global ambition into a social and spatial practice rooted in the places where people live.