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Contribution short abstract

Can buildings become climate actors? Drawing on ethnographic engagement with circular pioneers in the construction sector in Vienna and beyond, this paper explores how circular construction can help rethink the urban scale of climate mitigation.

Contribution long abstract

Circular economy has emerged as a key concept in sustainable development and has recently been applied at the urban scale. In 2023, the European Union launched the Circular Cities Declaration Report, signed by numerous member states, to promote a resource-efficient and socially responsible urban society. My contribution examines how “circular” appears to be the new “sustainable” in urban policy-making, drawing on my research in the construction sector.

In doing so, I expand the notion of the urban to include its hinterlands and propose working with the idea of planetary urbanization, which situates the urban within broader networks of resource and knowledge exchange. An anthropological perspective on resource reuse and recycling reveals how circulating objects are entangled in webs of knowledge and relationships that operate across scales, from the local to the global. Based on ethnographic engagement with the everyday work of circular pioneers in Vienna and beyond, my analysis further develops scalar thinking by incorporating buildings as central entities. Through careful design, construction, and maintenance of housing spaces, energy consumption is reduced not only during construction but also in cooling and heating interiors, thereby mitigating climate change. Through buildings, circular pioneers influence urban dynamics without taking the city itself as the starting point for their interventions.