Circularity strategies are increasingly recognized as essential for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improving material efficiency in urban environments. However, existing approaches often analyze sectors in isolation, limiting their ability to capture systemic interactions and spatial dependencies. In this study, we introduce the Integrated Urban Circularity (INTURC) framework that integrates construction, building...

Efficiency measures are insufficient for achieving greenhouse gas neutrality in the residential sector. Additional efforts are needed, with the concept of sufficiency gaining increasing attention. Sufficiency targets demand side and behavioural change, while delivering wellbeing. Reducing living space per capita is a sufficiency measure often suggested for residential buildings. However, research dealing with social perception...

Increasing global population and rising levels of wealth are raising demands for services such as shelter and mobility, leading to greater resource use and environmental impacts. Circular strategies can reduce the resources required for these services. However, the potential of circular strategies to reduce material demand is rarely quantified. Here, we present a method to link service, product, and resource use with circular...

Building material stocks (MS) account for over half of global raw material demand, significantly contributing to carbon emissions and land-use change. Yet, most research on material use in built environments focuses on Global North, overlooking rapidly urbanizing Global South. In this study, we present first spatially resolved estimates of building MS for three distinct socio-economic contexts in Pakistan. We develop a bottom-...

Mapping construction material stocks is essential for understanding socioeconomic metabolism and informing the circular economy. However, spatial material stock studies often produce coarse results owing to challenges in material intensity development. This paper introduces BUD-MI (Bottom-Up Data: Material Intensity), a material intensity data collection template designed with three core objectives: streamlining the data colle...

Material production accounts for 23% of all greenhouse gas emissions. More efficient use of materials—through decoupling of services that support human well‐being from material use—is imperative as other emission mitigation options are expensive. An interdisciplinary scientific assessment of material efficiency and its links to service provision, material cycle management, and climate policy is needed to identify effective str...

Each year businesses, governments, and homeowners in the United States invest around one fifth of gross domestic product into the creation of capital assets such as buildings, machinery, and software to enable production and consumption. Use of capital is typically included to some extent in environmental life cycle assessments of goods and services but is not incorporated into most environmentally extended input‐output (EEIO)...