Integrating Circular Economy Principles into Urban Mobility for Smart City Transportation: A Literature-Grounded Review

This paper develops a literature-grounded review on connecting circular economy (CE) principles and urban mobility to examine how smart city transportation can be reshaped through durable design, reuse, service-based models, and materials stewardship. A structured review of indexed documents (2010–April 2026) from Scopus and Web of Science identified a set of papers that were screened, thematically grouped into six clusters (design, digital infrastructures, shared mobility, materials management, social inclusion, decision support), and synthesized via textual analysis to generate an integrative, evidence-based conceptual framework, identify empirical and methodological gaps, and propose policy-relevant research priorities informed by the identified topics. The literature documents CE interventions and analytical methods that can lower embodied impacts, raise asset utilization, and recover secondary materials when backed by clear public policies, coordinated governance, and digital platforms. Key limitations include fragmented governance, optimistic recovery rate assumptions, limited integration of life cycle analyses, and weak empirical evidence linking participatory processes to measurable outcomes. The findings are relevant to researchers, planners, policymakers, and practitioners, and indicate that operationalizing circular approaches in urban mobility requires cross-sectoral policy alignment, data governance, financing reform, inclusive stakeholder engagement, interoperable platforms, and longitudinal place-based pilots with multi-metric monitoring aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals.