Cities will have a decisive role in reducing the consumption of resources and greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Various experiences of urban regeneration have exploited Information and Communication Technology (ICT) potentialities to optimize the management of complex systems and to encourage sustainable development models. This paper investigates the role of ICT technologies in favouring emerging design for Circular Economy (CE) in the urban context. The paper starts by defining the theoretical background and subsequently presents the goal and methodology of investigation. Through a scoping review, the authors identify case studies and analyse them within the Ellen MacArthur Foundation classification framework that splits the urban context into three urban systems: buildings, mobility and products. The research focuses on nine case studies where the ICT solutions were able to promote the principles of CE. The results show, on the one hand, how data management appears to be a central issue in the optimization of urban processes and, on the other hand, how the district scale is the most appropriate to test innovative solutions. This paper identifies physical and virtual infrastructures, stakeholders and tools for user engagement as key elements for the pursuit of CE adoption in the urban context.

Contemporary residential contexts are characterized by new ICT products and services, which collect data about user behaviours. These data are rarely used to develop services for user or community well-being. By contrast, designers typically focus on these goals in contemporary design. An analysis using Systemic Design tools was carried out to understand the type of data flow that is generated by users in contemporary living contexts, to identify the main stakeholders of this data flow, and to highlight the main problems of data collection for the users, the community, and the local area. This study aims to contribute to this growing area of research, highlighting its most important problem which designer must solve to realize the right user-generated data flow system in contemporary living contexts.