Amsterdam City Doughnut

Downscaling the global concept of the Doughnut to turn it into a tool for transformative action in the City of Amsterdam

Posted by Amsterdam Donut Coalition & the DEAL Team July, 07, 2020 54 likes

Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands

(This story was updated with some additional links and information in April 2025)

* The Amsterdam City Doughnut report (English) *
* 암스테르담 시티 도넛 (한국어) *

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Overview

In April 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 lockdown, the City of Amsterdam provided a much-needed surge of hope worldwide by publicly embracing the Doughnut as a tool to guide their social and economic recovery from the pandemic.

This announcement came as a milestone in the ongoing engagement with the Doughnut by Dutch officials and changemakers, especially following the translation of Doughnut Economics: 7 ways to think like a 21st century economist in early 2018. Momentum picked up in Amsterdam during a series of workshops run in collaboration with DEAL’s locally based partners Circle Economy in 2019, where city officials came together to design one of the city’s most ambitious initiatives: Amsterdam’s strategy to be 100% circular by 2050.

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Based on the success of the Amsterdam Circular Strategy, the City joined the Thriving Cities Initiative – a collaboration between Biomimicry 3.8, C40 Cities, Circle Economy, and Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) – to create the first Amsterdam City Doughnut Portrait. Since then, Amsterdam has included an updated version of their Portrait results in their biennial 'State of the City 2020-2021' report, with plans to continue such monitoring in-house on an ongoing basis.

The Amsterdam City Doughnut was the first public presentation of the City Portrait approach to downscaling the global Doughnut to the city scale. The aim of this approach is to provide a holistic snapshot of the city’s many complex interconnections with the world in which it is embedded, by considering its local aspirations – to be thriving people in a thriving place – and global responsibilities, both social and ecological.

You can find the updated methodological guide for creating city portraits, called 'Doughnut Data Portraits' here, and you can see a collection of Data Portraits done by others here.

By introducing Doughnut-thinking into policymaking, coupled with the self-organising and dynamic uptake of the Doughnut by the city’s civil society through the Amsterdam Doughnut Coalition, Amsterdam has provided an inspirational and pioneering starting point for turning Doughnut Economics into 21st century transformative action.

In 2025, over 50 local governments from around the world have brought in Doughnut Economics (DE) in their policies and processes - to learn more about the work of other cities and regions working with DE, check out our guide Cities&Regions: Let's Get Started, that includes case studies from 12 cities, including Amsterdam.