Discover the Community

Waverley Council, in Sydney, partnered in a 12-month Regen Waverley program, conducted by Regen Sydney as part of the Council's Thinker in Residence grant. As part of this programme, a community of practice of over 100 local residents, participated in a series of 17 public workshops, aimed at defining a collective vision for regeneration, developing cornerstone indicators for progress, and identifying collective pathways for transition. Doughnut Economics was used as a compass for collective action throughout the program. The Council is now monitoring the indicators, to measure progress towards social and ecological resilience through both Council and community led activities.    

The City of Glasgow has ambitions to move towards a Green Wellbeing Economy in order to meet its social and environmental targets, and has joined C40's Thriving Cities Initiative. An important step in the process of becoming a thriving city is the creation of a (Doughnut Economics) City Portrait, a tool for thinking about Glasgow in a holistic and innovative way. University of Glasgow worked with the city to develop the first City Portrait, as part of the GALLANT project that uses Glasgow as a living lab to trial new sustainable solutions taking a whole-systems approach. In 2023, the Thriving Definitions of the first portrait (the Glasgow Doughnut) were adopted by the council to guide their future work, and to help forge new alliances across Glasgow's many organisations, businesses and individuals across the whole system. 

Since 2021, the local government of Valence Romans Agglo have been using the Doughnut as a tracking and monitoring tool for over 20 strategic projects, developing contextualised social and ecological indicators, evaluating the potential impact of these projects and steering their development. 

After commissioning a study evaluating the possibilities of applying Doughnut Economics in Tomelilla, the town is bringing Doughnut Economics into their work and policies in various ways - by basing their Sustainability Report 2022 on the Doughnut, planning the development of a new school based on the principles of Doughnut Economics, developing a Data Portrait, and exploring the development of an impact assessment and evaluation tool.   

Nanaimo City’s Council passed a motion to “adopt the Doughnut Economic Model as a cohesive vision for all City initiatives and planning processes”, creating a City Portrait that was blended with their REIMAGINE NANAIMO visioning process. The city has since been using the Doughnut as a unifying framework across the Council, gradually bringing it into a number of policies and strategies - from land use planning, to procurement, to investment.

In 2022, Perak State launched their 5-year State Strategy that, as one of the strategy’s Flagship Programmes, sets an ambition for the city of Ipoh to be living in the Doughnut, and to use a monitoring framework using the Doughnut. 

The city has launched its ‘2040 Approach’ - a transition path and resilience strategy, which will be using the Doughnut as one of the guiding frameworks, and is about to start a process of developing a City Portrait.

Starting in 2020, “Brussels Donut” project explores various ways of implementing the Doughnut Economy, aiming to make the Doughnut a shared compass used by all actors of the region, to imagine the future of Brussels and to make coherent decisions in favour of the ecological and social transition. The project is now starting its second phase, during which the focus will be on raising awareness of the Brussels administrations and businesses to help them embark on the Donut journey, and also to turning the Brussels Doughnut Portrait into a live and operational dashboard for the transition of the Region.

Barcelona is embracing Doughnut Economics through a series of actions. They are developing a City Portrait through desktop-work led by researchers, followed by a series of workshops with different departments, and with city stakeholders (organisations, community groups, trade unions) and residents. They have also organised a series of public debates 'for a new economy' open to all residents, and are beginning to explore pathways to bringing the City Portrait work and the Doughnut into policymaking. 

Bad Nauheim has been developing a City Portrait through a series of workshops with department heads and Councillors, linking the city’s goals and objectives with the ecological and social indicators of the Portrait. They are now undergoing a public participation process, planning to anchor the new Sustainability strategy in the City Portrait.