ARS LONGA

Their core work

ARS LONGA is a Paris-based NGO working at the intersection of urban circular economy, governance design, and digital systems. Their work centers on how cities and metropolitan areas can redesign material flows — waste, packaging, plastics, water, textiles, wood, and agrifood streams — through new institutional frameworks and business models rather than purely technical fixes. In the REFLOW project they developed what they call the "circular metapolis" concept, combining governance design, incentive mechanisms, and decision-support tools to make circular material flows viable at city scale. In CENTRINNO they contributed to reimagining former industrial areas as hubs for urban innovation and transformation.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

ARS LONGA entered H2020 in 2019 with a clearly defined focus: circular material flows in cities, backed by a rich vocabulary around governance, decision support, incentive design, and digital tools like blockchain. Their second project, CENTRINNO (2020), extended into urban spatial transformation — industrial areas as innovation nodes — with no recorded keyword overlap, suggesting a broadening from material systems toward place-based urban regeneration. With only two projects it is impossible to confirm a strong trend, but the direction appears to be from circular economy methodology toward a wider urban transformation agenda.

ARS LONGA appears to be expanding from circular economy methodology into broader urban regeneration, making them a candidate partner for projects that need governance and business model expertise applied to physical urban transformation challenges.

How they like to work

ARS LONGA has never led an H2020 project — they join as participant or third party, consistently operating inside large consortia. With 52 unique partners across just two projects, both consortia were large and geographically diverse, which is typical for Innovation Actions at city scale. This pattern suggests they are a specialist contributor valued for a specific methodological offering — governance design, circular economy frameworks, or stakeholder process facilitation — rather than a technical lead or infrastructure provider.

ARS LONGA has built a surprisingly broad network for a two-project organization: 52 unique partners across 14 countries. This reflects the large, multi-city consortia typical of Innovation Actions targeting urban transformation across European contexts.

What sets them apart

ARS LONGA occupies an unusual niche: they are not a research institute, engineering firm, or municipal body, but an NGO that operates as a governance and systems design specialist inside technically-heavy urban consortia. Their "circular metapolis" framing — treating the city as a metabolic system with designable material flows — is a distinctive conceptual contribution. For consortium builders who need civil society perspective, policy design expertise, or a partner capable of engaging public spaces and multi-actor governance, ARS LONGA fills a role that technical partners cannot.

Highlights from their portfolio

• REFLOW
  Their only funded project (EUR 235,700) and the source of their core 'circular metapolis' methodology, covering six material streams simultaneously with governance, digital tools, and business model components across European cities.
• CENTRINNO
  A longer-running project (2020–2024) in which ARS LONGA participated as a third party, extending their urban circular economy work into the spatial regeneration of industrial areas — a notable scope expansion.