Circular City Index: An Open Data analysis to assess the urban circularity preparedness of cities to address the green transition -- A study on the Italian municipalities

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Circular City Index (CCI), a data-driven tool to assess Italian municipalities' readiness for green transition by measuring circularity attributes using open data, aiding policy and investment decisions.

Contribution

It develops a comprehensive, open-data-based index for municipal circularity, providing a new quantitative measure to support green policy planning at local and national levels.

Findings

CCI follows a normal distribution across municipalities.

Disparities in circularity are evident across regions and city sizes.

The index offers actionable insights for policymakers and practitioners.

Abstract

We present a circularity transition index based on open data principles and circularity of energy, material, and information. The aim of the Circular City Index is to provide data and a succinct measurement of the attributes related to municipalities performances that can support the definition of green policies at national and local level. We have identified a set of key performance indicators, defined at municipality level, measuring factors that, directly and indirectly, could influence circularity and green transition, with a focus on the green new deal vision embraced by the European Union. The CCI is tested on a open dataset that collects data covering 100% of the Italian municipalities (7,904). Our results show that the computation of the CCI on a large sample leads to a normal distribution of the index, suggesting disparities both under the territorial point of view and under the point of view of city size. Results provide useful information to practitioner, policy maker and experts from academia alike, to define effective tools able to underpin a careful planning of investments supported by the national recovery and resilience plan recently issued by the Italian government. This may be particularly useful to enhance enabling factors of the green transition that may differ across territories, helping policymakers to promote a smooth and fair transition by fostering the preparedness of municipalities in addressing the challenge.