This study provides a comprehensive view of the research field of construction and demolition waste (CDW) management in the circular economy based on a literature review. The increased intensity of interest is due to the need to create frameworks, mechanisms, and tools for the process of mind-shifting towards circularity. Research topics, researched life cycle stages, strategies for CDW management, sustainability assessment, building stock quantification, assessment tools and forecast methods, materials with CDW content, waste treatment solutions, and the barriers and drivers for efficient waste management in the construction industry are identified as the main concerns in the analyzed research field. The results show that a major concern in the academic field directs research to the path of innovative strategy elaboration, identifying the enablers and barriers in CDW management, computational tool creation for design and assessment, building stock modeling, and circular building material development. The environmental approach prevails, leaving economic and social assessments in CDW management uncovered. Although stakeholders’ involvement is stressed in most cases, strategies for awareness-raising and education for a sustainable circular activity in the field are lacking. The circularity of CDW management being a multifaceted and multi-disciplinary complex challenge, it is approached on different levels. This study introduces the novelty of structuring the trends of existing knowledge in a holistic view, identifying the research directions, dimensions, specific aspects, and instruments.

Climate change and increasing pressure on natural resources highlight the limitations of the predominantly linear economic model of production and consumption, and the need for more integrated sustainable approaches. Circular economy (CE) strategies offer a potential alternative, contributing to reduction of emissions and resource conservation, while increasing the resilience of systems to climate shocks. This review examines the relationship between CE, emission reduction, resource efficiency, and climate resilience. A bibliometric analysis was first conducted for the initial subset of reviewed articles obtained from the Web of Science (WoS), following particularly predesigned criteria for inclusion and exclusion, to establish the main conceptual and thematic structures in the literature. Across the 72 studies included in the final review, sectors such as construction, energy, and waste management emerged as prominent application fields, with strategies like reuse, recycling, industrial symbiosis, and product as a service among frequently investigated strategies. The contribution of CE to climate resilience in the current review remains limited. Resilience, however, is often harder to measure and less well-documented. To address this gap, an integrated framework is proposed that brings together indicators of emissions reduction, resource saving, and climate resilience, allowing potential synergies and trade-offs among these dimensions. The findings further highlight the need to move from isolated assessment towards a more systematic interconnected assessment.