Urban Regeneration Through Circularity: Exploring the Potential of Circular Development in the Urban Villages of Chengdu, China

Research on circular development in China’s urban planning remains limited, particularly regarding marginalized groups’ actions. This study addresses the gap by examining circular practices within informal food systems in Chengdu’s urban villages. It highlights residents’ bottom-up initiatives in food production and consumption and their interactions with the broader urban context. Using street interviews and Research through Design, it develops community-based visions to improve these actions and the needed planning tools for implementation. It also explores how circular development could support urban regeneration by recognizing overlooked resources and practices. Semi-structured expert interviews reveal barriers in China’s planning system to accommodate such visions. Findings indicate that local circular actions—driven by local labor and knowledge and efforts to tackle polluted land and idle spaces—offer valuable opportunities for circular development. However, deficiencies in planning tools for spatial planning, waste treatment, land contamination regulation, and vulnerability recognition create barriers to upscaling these initiatives. This study calls for integrating circular development into China’s spatial planning by strengthening top-down tools and fostering grassroots initiatives to promote sustainable resource flows, ecosystem health, and social equity. It also offers broader insights into promoting circular development by recognizing and integrating informal, bottom-up practices in cities undergoing informal settlement regeneration.