In April 2020, in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the city of Amsterdam announced the adoption of the doughnut as its official framework for post-pandemic economic reconstruction. Working with Raworth and the Doughnut Economics Action Lab, Amsterdam produced a "City Portrait" — a detailed accounting of the city's current position relative to both the social foundation and the ecological ceiling, adapted to local conditions.
The Amsterdam portrait revealed, on the social-foundation side, gaps in affordable housing, healthcare access, and participation in public life. On the ecological-ceiling side, it showed Amsterdam's consumption footprint transgressing multiple boundaries, with a particularly large contribution from imported goods whose ecological costs occurred elsewhere. The city committed to designing policies — in procurement, housing, food, circular economy, and climate — explicitly oriented toward moving the portrait toward the doughnut's safe and just space.
The adoption has been imitated by cities including Copenhagen, Brussels, Portland, Nanaimo, Berlin, Melbourne, and Barcelona. A network of