From a global idea to a city programme

Think about everything that goes into getting a family through an ordinary Tuesday. Somebody has to get dinner ready. Somebody has soccer practice. The groceries need buying, the laundry needs doing, and tomorrow morning everyone has to get out the door again. Bedtime might be eight o’clock, but you don’t start getting ready at eight. There are teeth to brush, pyjamas to find, and a child who suddenly remembers something terribly important.

Every household works this out a little differently. Some people plan the week on Sunday. Others decide what’s for dinner on the drive home. Either way, there’s only so much time, only so much money, and certain things everybody needs. You try to make it all fit.

Kate Raworth was looking at a much bigger version of that problem. In a paper published by Oxfam in 2012, she put two things into one picture. People need food, water, somewhere to live and enough money to get by. But producing everything we use also puts pressure on the world around us: the climate, the water, the soil, the living things we depend on.

Her picture was shaped like a doughnut. Fall into the hole in the middle and people are going without the basics. Push beyond the outside edge and we’re asking more of the planet than it can handle. The goal is to get everyone into the space between those two edges. ^[1]

That explains why social justice and the environment appear together in this thinking. Raworth’s argument includes how resources are shared, who has enough, and who uses the most. She also warned that a badly designed environmental policy could leave people struggling even more to meet their needs. Keep that thought in mind. A plan can have a good intention and still make an ordinary Tuesday harder. ^[1]

A city buys things, builds things, collects waste and decides where development can happen. Its residents buy food, clothes, cars and furniture from all over the world. Suddenly, the doughnut gives officials a way to look at those decisions together. What does a purchase do for people here? What does making it do to people and places somewhere else?

Amsterdam helped turn that thinking into a tool for cities. Its City Doughnut, published in March 2020, was created by Doughnut Economics Action Lab, working with Biomimicry 3.8, Circle Economy and C40. Those names have different jobs in this story. DEAL develops ways to put Raworth’s ideas into practice. Biomimicry looks to nature for ideas about design. Circle Economy works on keeping materials in use. C40 brings cities together around climate action.

There is an actual document with their names on it. And Circle Economy also worked closely with Amsterdam on the city’s circular strategy. By “circular”, think of keeping a coat in use through repair, rather than throwing it away and making another one. ^[2]

Here’s one small example of what Amsterdam offers. Through its Stadspas scheme, cardholders can get a discount on clothing repairs at participating shops. The offer we checked in October 2026 gives the example of a €15 repair costing the customer €9. ^[3]

You can picture that. A coat has a torn seam. The owner takes it to a shop, gets it fixed and pays less because of the scheme. The city encourages people to keep clothes longer by helping with the repair bill.

Now we have something we can examine. How many people use it? What does it cost the city? How many clothes get repaired that would otherwise have been thrown away? A poster advertising a discount answers a different question from a record showing what the discount achieved.

The same care is needed with the bigger numbers. Amsterdam reported a drop in its use of new, non-renewable materials between 2016 and 2022. But its own account also points to a coal-plant closure, changes at the port and the effects of the pandemic. We have to work out how much of the change came from the policies we’re examining. ^[4]

Closer to home, Nanaimo’s council adopted the Doughnut model in December 2020, according to its municipal reports. Staff then worked on a local version, with targets and ways to measure progress. Here the idea was entering familiar territory: staff reports, committee discussions and council decisions. ^[5]

That brings us back to North Cowichan. We can see how other places picked up the idea and began using it. But we still need to understand the choice made here. Why did we choose this for North Cowichan? How did we decide it was the right way to go?

To answer that, we need to look at what was put in front of our council, what residents were asked, and what changed along the way.