From reaction

From reaction

From reaction to anticipation

The potential of Circularity Optimizer in Public Administration

In urban planning and public administration, we often face the same challenge: information exists, but it arrives too late, fragmented, or disconnected from the real interests of the actors involved. From our professional practice as architects and urban planners, and from our experience working within the Municipality of Córdoba, we see every day how this affects projects, timelines, and public resources.

In traditional urban processes, each actor operates within their own logic. Technical teams develop proposals; environmental departments evaluate impacts later; urban operators assess feasibility once projects are already advanced, and citizens are often involved only after the key decisions have already been made. The result is predictable: late corrections, interdepartmental conflicts, administrative delays, and projects requiring multiple adjustments before implementation.

In a public space intervention or urban regeneration processes, the absence of an integrated tool often leads to the same pattern: design phases prioritise surface area, initial costs, or immediate functional requirements, while critical questions about maintenance, material reuse, environmental impact, or compatibility with other municipal plans emerge too late to influence key decisions.

Circularity Optimizer[1], could change this dynamic from the start. Environmental, economic and operational teams can visualize trade-offs before decisions are made. Citizens can also engage more meaningfully when the real implications of different alternatives are visible from the outset.

“Today, we often arrive at meetings with incomplete data. In the future, with the tool, we can arrive with solid arguments.”

These challenges are not exclusive to Córdoba.  In interviews conducted with public and private actors linked to urban and circular development in China, several recurring issues emerged: fragmented information, coordination difficulties between departments, lack of shared tools, and conflicting technical, economic, and political priorities – decisions made without visualizing integrated impacts from the start.

This comparison is highly relevant for Córdoba and for any city aiming to build more resilient and coordinated urban governance.

“For the first time, different departments can discuss the same project using shared information and common indicators”

Within municipal administration, Circularity Optimizer could improve processes. Instead of working with isolated information and disconnected stages, departments could evaluate shared scenarios from the very beginning. The tool could also help identify conflicts between actors earlier, improve transparency in decision-making, and reduce administrative delays caused by late-stage corrections.

From both professional practice and public administration experience, we believe the main value of this tool is not purely technological. It is the potential to create better conversations among decision-makers. When those conversations happen early, the potential to build more sustainable, viable, and coordinated urban projects changes entirely. Because anticipation is not just a technical advantage. It is a different way of understanding public management – one that is more collaborative, more transparent, and better prepared for the challenges of the cities we want to build.

Laura P. Spinadel and Jimena Berezovsky, for URBAN MENUS Decision Intelligence Lab

[1] TECXPORT Bilateral Cooperation Austria-Jiangsu/People’s Republic of China JSTD 2023, co-funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG

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