Prosumerism in Oosterwold: Designing a Transitional Practice of Food Growing

Abstract

Imagine a neighborhood where almost all of the decisions are left to its inhabitants; a neighborhood where all of the inhabitants cultivate soil to grow their food for their own consumption, in other words prosumerism*. This newly established neighborhood is Oosterwold which is located in the intersection of Dutch cities Almere and Zeewolde. Oosterwold is specifically designed to include agriculture activites into everyday life of its inhabitants which would enable sustainable ways of living in the area. This project is an attempt to explore the opportunities that prosumerism holds to enable the transition towards sustainability in Oosterwold. It explores and designs for prosumerism in Oosterwold as a means to foster the transition in the area. By framing prosumerism as a social practice and making use of ideas from transition design; the project offers a bottom-up approach to foster sharing and exchange of gardening things in the neighborhood. In order to understand and further design for the elements of prosumerism, the project makes use of both human and thing-centered design research methods. The project advocates that once the needs and desires of prosumers together with the role of gardening tools in the practice are discovered, then it would be possible to design for prosumerism to foster sustainable ways of living. The broader project question of “how can we enable the ongoing transition in Oosterwold through the food growing practices of inhabitants?” is narrowed down to the design goal of “how can we enable community building of prosumers through supporting their meanings of food growing in Oosterwold?”. The project choses sharing, exchanging and collaboration as mechanisms which enable community building in Oosterwold. Through increasing involvement in prosumerism activities and facilitating know-how sharing of individuals about gardening, community building can be reached. The resulted design is DIY Exchange Hubs that are cube-like boxes for Oosterwolders to exchange gardening things like tools, books, seeds and excess produce. The hubs can be built by Oosterwolders with the help of building manual which includes drawings of the pieces, instructions about how to put them together and extended features section that includes tips about coloring and functional differentiation of the hubs. Further, the hubs can be traced and tracked with the mobile application. Through the application, Oosterwolders may see the current status of the hubs, how to make use of the things that are in the hubs and further make a hub building request. *: A made up word which is derived from the combination of “producer” and “consumer”: “prosumer” refers to the ones who grow their own food where “prosumerism” refers to the practice of prosumers.