October 2020 Mechelen signed the objective to reduce the materials footprint at it’s territory by 30% by 2030. The maintenance and construction of the public domain fall mainly under local competence and provides an interesting case to significantly reduce the urban material footprint through circular material management.

To structurally embed circular principles in the design and management of our public realm, we describe a possible solution that consists of an interaction between these known and new elements:

• The linking of spatial data with asset management through optimizations in work processes and switching to regionally used open standards;
• A new (temporary) coordinating role that guides services in the transition to circular design and management of public domain;
• A sustainable image quality framework in which the life cycle cost of materials is a determining factor and which assumes the revaluation of the existing;
• Researching new application possibilities for common materials with a high environmental impact.