Buildings and materials are valuable, yet underutilized reserves of space and secondary resources embedded within the urban built environment. The principles of Circular Economy are a promising countermodel to current waste practices by utilizing the resource potentials of the existing building and material stocks. The purpose of this dissertation is to identify the most meaningful application areas and the potential impact of establishing a circular approach within the Finnish building stock. Subjects of this dissertation are the national building stock but also the case cities Tampere and Vantaa. To achieve this goal, the key foci are to create an understanding of the building stock composition, the drivers, and environmental impacts (in form of material, energy, and carbon emissions) of demolition, and how the natural transformation capacity of buildings could be utilized to extend building and material life cycles. The methods applied in this research are based on the idea of Urban Metabolism which gets studied in Material Flow Analysis as well as a statistical study of typical changes in building function. The results will give an overview of the challenges but also opportunities in current business-as-usual to develop more sustainable building stock management approaches. The main target groups of this work are both policymakers and practitioners in the built environment to be guided in the transition towards a circular built environment.

2023

2024