Transformative Hope. Blockchains and civic digital platforms for circular urban economies

In a context where envisioning the future is increasingly challenging, digital innovation has emerged as a genuine beacon of hope for improving our territories, particularly in terms of social and environmental justice. However, this optimism is tempered by various complexities and ambiguities, highlighting the limitations of a strictly technocratic perspective on digital innovation. Notably, the use of digital technologies in civic and non-profit urban projects offers compelling examples that diverge from such a technocratic view. The research presented in this paper is part of the European project CORPUS, which seeks to explore viable models of circular urban economies (CUE) aimed at retrofitting public urban spaces through participatory processes and digital technologies. This paper provides an exploratory review of CUE and examines how digital tools are integrated within them. Furthermore, it discusses the selected cases through the lens of prefigurative planning (Davoudi, 2023), a critical framework for assessing both their potential to challenge the status quo of unsustainable production and consumption patterns in urban contexts and the inherent complexities they entail.