Integrating Green and Circular Economy: A Novel Approach to Sustainable Income in Birjand

Providing various urban services to meet the needs of citizens is one of the responsibilities of municipalities. As desirable management of cities requires sufficient funding, municipalities must access suitable financial resources, and in particular sustainable income, to carry out their duties. However, the increasing urbanization undermines the capacity of future cities for environmental sustainability and economic growth. Therefore, a new model of sustainable income source is required for municipalities that not only protects the environment, but also promotes economic and social development. To overcome the challenges and obstacles faced by future cities, the integration of green and circular economy as common concepts in macro-level discussions on sustainability in various fields will be very effective. These concepts include various guidelines for attaining economic, social, and environmental goals, and using each of them in isolation does not provide a comprehensive solution to address the problems. This applied study comprehensively examines revenues of Birjand municipality during 2016 to 2020, and using a qualitative method, snowball sampling, and systematic thinking seeks to identify the shortage of sustainable financial resources as the most influential factor in the increase of unsustainable revenues of Birjand municipality in recent years. Finally, this paper presents innovative revenue approaches based on the integration of green and circular economy in physical-spatial areas, transportation, industry, infrastructure, and facilities.