Generative Environmental Design Tools to Support Circular Economy at the Local Scale

The insights presented in the paper shows the main features of tools oriented to develop scenarios, with the intention of identifying possible synergies between carbon neutral scenarios and the ones oriented to boost local circular economy processes. This paper focuses on the potential use of Free and Open Source tools in particular Geographic Information Systems and open data in order to develop maps to support Generative Environmental Design (GED). GED is defined in this paper as an approach to the design of the anthropized environment oriented towards the development of Generative Economies [1] , i.e. based on the generative cycles that constitute the natural (circular) metabolism of the territory. The approach presented by Kelly puts on the same level aspects associated with labour, social inclusion and respect for natural cycles by defining peculiar principles of a Generative Economy. To support the pursuit of these principles, design tools should on the one hand help to know and map the salient features of the territory, and on the other understand the dynamics related to the main activities of the settled community. To this end, useful tools to represent this information on the same georeferenced support are offered by the Impact Geographies (IG) and Resource Geographies (RG). The paper presents the application of an experimental method that applies these tools to the Chiaravalle district south of the metropolitan city of Milan, in order to know and quantify the dynamics related to the main activities of a specific community, and finally develop improvement scenarios. The main strategy adopted in the development of these scenarios aims to maximize the internal flow of usable solar energy [2], in the direction of maximum eco-efficiency.