EDITORIAL ACTIVITY

Urban Metabolism in Transition: Integrating Space, Function, Services and Practices for the Next Generation of Metabolic Studies

Daniela Perrotti serves as Lead Guest Editor of a Resources, Conservation and Recycling special issue integrating spatial, functional, service-based and practice-oriented approaches to urban metabolism.

Editorial activity information

AUTHORS

Daniela Perrotti; Kangkang Tong; Ilona M. Otto; Bhartendu Pandey; Dominik Wiedenhofer

DATE

ACTIVITY TYPE

Special Issue

JOURNAL OR PUBLISHER

Resources, Conservation and Recycling — Elsevier

RESEARCH AXIS

Cross-Axis

THEMES

Urban metabolism; Space; Ecosystem services; Social practices; Post-growth

METHODS

Special-issue editorial coordination; peer review; interdisciplinary synthesis

Editorial activity overview

This editorial initiative brings together research that expands urban metabolism beyond conventional city-wide stock-and-flow accounting. Its organising themes—space, function, services and practices—reflect four areas in which the field is developing new conceptual and methodological depth.

The special issue highlights spatially explicit analysis, the functions and services generated by resource systems, and the practices and agents through which flows are organised. It therefore creates a common forum for industrial ecology, planning, geography, design and social-ecological research.

Daniela Perrotti serves as Lead Guest Editor of this Resources, Conservation and Recycling special issue from 2025–present. Her role builds on the Urban Metabolism Lab’s own cross-axis programme. The initiative is intended to encourage methods that remain quantitatively robust while becoming more attentive to place, agency, wellbeing and implementation.