Back to the Commons

Back to the Commons: Introducing Regenerative Agricultural Networks in Northwestern Europe

Shekar, Kirthan (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)
Nguyen, Nancy (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)
van der Steen, Raven (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)
Saridou, Stefania (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)
Hoogland, Willemijn (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

Katsikis, N. (mentor)
Viseu Cardoso, Rodrigo (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Urbanism

AR2U086 R&D Studio – Spatial Strategies for the Global Metropolis

2023-04-21

For the last decades, technologies, new agricultural trade policies, environmental restrictions, high pressure through economic competition in combination with a sharp competition of land lead to the development of intensive farming. As a result, patchy landscapes have been replaced by monofunctional, homogeneous agricultural landscapes that fragment natural landscapes and take away natural and cultural diversity. The consequences of the processes of fragmentation and homogenization are both socio-economic and landscape-ecological and cause biodiversity loss and social injustice among farmers.
Through changing existing paradigms about nature conservation, this project suggests an alternative approach for understanding possible interrelations between nature and agricultural practices. By reintroducing concepts about commons, a synergy can be found that compliments natural connectivity and agricultural landscapes through the establishment of a regenerative agro-ecological network that connects biotopes in a multi-functional way using current agricultural parcels and natural zones. This newly introduced Common Ground network produces a new farming method in which agricultural practice has a temporal character and is a continuous modifiable process. In this way, the vision makes use of the dual crisis as a solution rather than seeing it as the source of the problems.
The Commons also resemble a new way of practising agriculture, in which land, knowledge, resources and financial risks are shared among farmers in a socially just way. In addition, these shared landscapes reflect on the social context in which farmers are considered as environmental stewards who share some of the responsibility for an ecologically balanced system.

Agriculture
Nitrogen
biodiversity
Commons
environmental stewardship

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:e1cc7094-9d4f-41b1-8a3d-bb68cf7a6fae

Student theses

student report

© 2023 Kirthan Shekar, Nancy Nguyen, Raven van der Steen, Stefania Saridou, Willemijn Hoogland