Wastescapes are the result of unsustainable linear growth processes and their spatial consequences within the context of urban metabolic flows and related infrastructure. They represent the operational infrastructure for waste management and include Drosscapes, generating complex relations with the servicing and surrounding territory. In particular, the peri-urban areas are spatially affected by these processes. This often leads to ineffective use and/or abandonment because they are currently impossible to use, demanding impactful (and often expensive) regeneration and revalorization to make them usable again. Being part of the urban metabolic process, wastescapes are in a continuous state of dynamic equilibrium. They can be considered crucial areas from a metropolitan perspective because they have the potential to become innovative spatial contexts or resources in a Circular Economy (CE), which aims to overcome the crises of both resource scarcity and spatial fragmentation. However, common and shared definitions of wastescapes are still missing at the European policy level, as only classical categories of material waste are generally mentioned. Wastescapes can be considered as ‘potentiality contexts’ where developing, testing, and implementing Eco-Innovative Solutions (EIS) can be done. By doing so, wastescapes can help start transitions towards a CE. This can be achieved by using Peri-urban Living Labs (PULL), which have the potential to be the virtual and physical environments in which experimenting the collaborative co-creation process for developing EIS can be done. Doing so will allow for the improvement of waste management and for the revalorization of wastescapes in collaboration with all potential stakeholders.

Resource consumption and related waste production are still rapidly increasing all over the world, leading to social and environmental challenges and to the production of the so-called 'wastescapes'. Peri-urban areas-in-between urban and rural territories-are particularly vulnerable and prone to develop into wastescapes because they are generally characterised by mixed functions and/or monofunctional settlements, as well as by fragmentation in a low-density territory that is often crossed by large infrastructure networks. Moreover, peri-urban areas are generally the selected locations for the development of plants for waste management. In this way, they are crossed by waste flows of a different nature, in a landscape of operational infrastructures and wasted landscapes. Implementing Circular Economy (CE) principles, interpreting waste and wastescapes as resources, is a way to significantly reduce raw material and (soil) resource consumption, improving cities' metabolism. A circular approach can positively affect the spatial, social and environmental performances of periurban areas. However, the transition towards a CE presents many challenges. This article outlines an approach to address these challenges, presenting a co-creation process among researchers, experts and stakeholders within Living Labs (LLs) processes. LLs are physical and virtual spaces, aiming at the co-creation of site-specific eco-innovative solutions (EIS) and strategies. In the LLs, public-private-people partnerships are developed by applying an iterative methodology consisting of five phases: Co-Exploring, Co-Design, Co-Production, Co-Decision, and Co-Governance. This article presents a case study approach, analysing the co-creation methodology applied in two peri-urban living labs, located in the Metropolitan Areas of Naples (Italy) and Amsterdam (The Netherlands), within REPAiR Horizon2020 research project.

“Learning from abroad” is a widely recognised and used means to innovate and improve strategies and policies implemented by regions and cities. However, literature on knowledge transfer and related concepts, such as policy transfer, policy mobility or lesson-drawing, highlights the limitations of this process, especially when it entails the simple transfer of (best) practices from “place A” to “place B”. Such a transfer may lead to suboptimal solutions particularly when the imported practices concern complex phenomena, involving networks of multiple actors and relying on place-specific dynamics. Departing from this critique, the article sheds light on the process of knowledge transfer in the field of circular economy, taking place between the two metropolitan regions of Amsterdam and Naples. This process is guided by an innovative methodology based on a network of (peri-urban) living labs generating eco-innovative solutions for using material waste and wastescapes as a resource in peri-urban areas. Using participant observation in knowledge transfer workshops, stakeholder interviews and surveys, it investigates how the process of co-creation of knowledge in the relational space of the networked living labs takes place thanks to the participation of stakeholders from both regions. This in turn allows for drawing conclusions on what barriers are encountered in such knowledge transfer, what makes solutions transferable across different contexts, and, finally, how the solutions are adapted as they travel from one place to another.