RESIN Financial Metabolism: Towards efficient bundling of cashflows

Climate change is driving a paradigm shift towards zero carbon energy and mobility systems, climate adaptive cities and circular production chains. Local authorities have a unique role to play in these societal challenges as they – of all authorities – have the closest relationship with citizens, local stakeholders and businesses. At this city level, unlocking appropriate finance for climate adaptation measures has proven to be a challenging task. The outcomes of many sustainable district initiatives show that translating collaborative visions into bankable implementation measures often fails, due to institutional and stakeholder complexities.
Looking at the city as a complex system really challenges the fit between interconnected layers and networks on the one hand and siloed, domain oriented departments, plans, incentives, subsidies, investments and accountancy mechanisms on the other hand. Ubiquitous calls for innovative finance -, investment-, business and organisational models at district level should overcome this mismatch, however these innovative delivery mechanisms often lack proper anchoring in in-depth knowledge on the real complexity and interdependencies of the district system. The concept of Urban Financial Metabolism is based on a holistic unravelling and analysing of the financial and value flows at district level. It combines these insights with knowledge of financial and non-financial co-benefits (multiple values) of the various planned interventions in the district, to identify innovative opportunities for modified project designs and new investments. This report is based on experiences with the RESIN cities of Manchester and Bolton (UK) and the cities of Rotterdam, Nijmegen and Zwolle.
This deliverable analyses the background literature of this innovative way of looking at integrated and sustainable city development. It shows some first impressions of how this methodology could work and it presents avenues for future research and steps towards a generic methodology. A methodology that improves the financial feasibility of climate adaptation measures at city level by optimally and combining financial flows within the area.