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Urban Future 2026 was hosted in the majestic city of Ljubljana in Slovenia. Stoic mountains stood strong and fresh greens were starting to poke through. This was all the impressive backdrop to an impactful and energising three days at the Urban Future 26 conference.
CBC hosted two sessions across the packed conference agenda. The first session was entitled ‘S, M OR L? City circular strategies that fit your size - How to get project scale and drivers right’. In this session CBC explored how different stakeholders can drive the circular transition from their unique perspectives, and the impact of scale on strategies and driving transition.
To get insights from the circularity agenda across Europe, the invited speakers were Jose Luis Cifuentes Sastre from an industry perspective, Irene Garcia from a policy and city perspective, Simone Kongsbak from a business perspective and Lea Korva from consumer perspective. They all gave overviews and examples of different drivers and strategies for the use of secondary materials. They shared how waste can be harvested as a new resource, how to align clients and contractors to use this ‘waste’ to build, and finally how cities can efficiently receive this new built fabric.
With the shared knowledge across a European setting it was clear to us that the circular economy - in different shapes and sizes - is growing. Exactly in what ways it is hard to define exactly, but there is a sense of momentum and optimism for the circular agenda across Europe.
The second session CBC hosted was entitled ‘Meet the Inventors’. This was a chance for the winning CBC Blueprint Projects of the 2025 Open Call to share their innovative projects with the Urban Future audience. In this session innovation in the circular economy was the emphasis. In talks from Richard Boyd from Laudes Foundation and Martin Joos from City of Winterthur the value of organising existing technologies in novel ways – for incremental innovation was highlighted. Their talks were followed by an audience rotation around the stands of the CBC Blueprint Projects.
The CBC Blueprint Projects cover a range of circularity topics.
· Biesmans Group is ironing out the technical and legal aspects of a novel roof-as-a-service business model.
· Circue’s project Re:Claim transforms how insurance property claims are settled by shifting from a new for old to a like for like model that prioritises the use of secondary materials inbuilding repairs.
· La Rue Asbl’s ISOL’ution is a pilot project recovering storing testing and reinstalling insulation materials testing the feasibility of this approach for larger scale implementation.
· ERFMI’s Project Loop is a pilot project for a collection and sorting hub for post-consumer resilient flooring waste in Belgium.
· Sirkulaer Ressurssentral’s ‘‘Refabricated in-situ concrete’’ project aims to pioneer methods and documentation standards for safely reusing cast-in-place concrete in new structural applications, unlocking one of construction’s largest untapped reuse potentials.
· Material Index are creating open access costing tools to make deconstruction and material reuse viable at the earliest decision points.
It was an excellent opportunity to share these ideas across geographies as well as connecting networks of innovators together for possible future partnerships and collaboration.
In speaking to a range of innovators at Urban Future, it was evident that at present the main perceived barriers to circular economy becoming mainstream is convincing the higher-level financiers as to the robust business case for circularity. The relative low market maturity for circularity is perceived as risk which is not appealing to all financiers. However, the increasing work on the circular economy from the perspective of insurance, procurement and assurance will continue to build the evidence for the strength, validity and longevity of circular solutions. All in all, it was a wonderful, informative and busy three days at Urban Future and we look forward to the next one.. in Istanbul!
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