Circular Economy Pathways for Sustainable Urban Housing in India: Practitioner‐Informed Insights

Rapid urbanisation, population growth, socioeconomic disparities, and sustainability pressures are intensifying India's urban housing challenges, particularly for low‐income and economically weaker section households, creating a critical need for context‐sensitive circular economy (CE) pathways. This study investigates how CE approaches can be contextualised for Indian urban housing through a 2‐day participatory workshop involving 20 built environment practitioners from 15 organisations. Participants collaboratively mapped systemic factors, identified design and material strategies, and refined circular interventions within a state‐level housing context. Workshop outcomes were subsequently analysed using hybrid inductive‐deductive qualitative content analysis, complemented by follow‐up interviews with five participants and a targeted policy and document alignment analysis. The findings show that CE in Indian urban housing is not only a technical issue of materials and design, but a multidimensional socio‐technical challenge shaped by governance, finance, stakeholder capacity, market acceptance, and behavioural change. The study developed a practitioner‐driven framework comprising six priority areas: policy and governance; stakeholder engagement, social inclusion, and capacity building; circular materials and resource loops; circular design and construction; business, finance, and market models; and technology and innovation. Follow‐up interviews further revealed growing practitioner understanding of CE as a systems and life cycle issue, while exposing persistent boundary blurring between CE and green building approaches. The policy and document alignment indicated that India already has partial CE implementation anchors, but these remain fragmented rather than integrated into a coherent CE pathway. Although exploratory, the study offers actionable entry points for policy, practice, and research in rapidly urbanising and resource‐constrained housing contexts.