The relation to energy is what carries humanity through every new spatial possibility. The context of the European Green Deal that triggers decarbonisation of many industries and faster energy transition to the latest technologies of renewable energy production is only one among many past and future transitions. All in all, it brings different conditions of possibility to think of energy as a spatio-temporal project. The relevance of space is brought forward when the scaling-up is also a spreading around, highlighting the potential not only in the agglomeration zones but mainly in its interdependence with operational landscapes. These areas must be invested with a renewed understanding of the distribution of renewable energy technologies in landscapes, realising its potential for socio-ecological connectivity and becoming a new backbone of urbanisation that can mediate alternatives for the state of climatic instability. In this direction, the Rhine basin is the location to investigate the relation of energy landscapes in the fossil-fuel age, anticipate the potentials and limitations of the ‘energy transition’ and speculate on the current and future energy modes. The project draws from territorial analyses, energy policy and technical documents and ecological perspectives to build a conceptual tool, introducing transitional landscapes that surpass current dichotomies between the urban and rural, conservation and industry, nature and economy and society. It develops a platform for common grounds where energy landscapes become temporal and spatial “stepping-stones” towards connecting and restoring landscapes towards just coexistence between natural processes, habitats for humans and fauna & flora amongst current and future modes of energy production. Eventually, it could serve as a background for developing policy instruments for rethinking European integration and networks beyond the typical infrastructures in Europe, becoming an alternative way of understanding territorial and regional integration.

Wildfires are widely viewed as key evolving inputs of Mediterranean ecosystem. But anthropogenic climate changes and other socioecological recessions have transformed normal wildfire into megafire, especially under the intensifying challenges posed by agricultural abandonment and the rapid growth of tourism. So that the paradigm shift is needed since the suppression capacity has been increasingly overcome from the fire department. This research is aiming to integrate diverse landscape dynamics and fire regimes, to interpret the interactions between them and identify a series of heterogeneous fire typologies in the Mediterranean region (EU part) in order to support the application of landscape-based approaches. By classifying the land system dynamics into meteorologic, physiographic, biological and anthropogenic indicators (in relation with wildfire ignition and propagation), geographic information system based approaches and statistic analysis are applied to create diagnostic mappings. The output of this analysis reveals several fire-landscape typologies and their spatial distribution in the Mediterranean, which improves the understanding of land system with natural crisis and is a basis for assessment of future changes under the regional climate, land use and land cover change and changes in management intensity. It also provides a evaluation and decision support tool in some specific locations for fire management, biodiversity protection and conservation of landscape values. Thus, the downscale works of analysis are still needed for bridging the disconnection between the gap between Mediterranean research and landscape design practice. The prospective use cases must additionally account for the geopolitical and socio-cultural context of the region in question, as a means of establishing an integrated framework for fire management. To advance the design perspective for mitigating the risks posed by wildfires, several key steps must be taken. Firstly, a toolkit must be developed based on defined fire-landscape typologies. These typologies represent landscape-based approaches that are tailored to the unique characteristics of each type of landscape. The toolkit will provide a range of strategies and design solutions for mitigating the risks of wildfires across different landscapes. To apply these strategies in real-world scenarios, two key locations have been selected in the Iberian peninsula, namely northern Coimbra District (Portugal) and Marina Alta (a coastal comarca of the autonomous community of Valencia, Spain). These locations are identified as an interface with agricultural abandonment, and a dense littoralised tourism place, respectively, and are all typical fire-prone areas. By integrating the local context of each location with the selected approaches from the toolkit, resilient and adaptive scenarios for wildfire risk can be created. The design actions taken in these representative areas can subsequently be expanded and reproduced across a broad Mediterranean region. This approach allows for a comprehensive and effective mitigation of wildfire risks across a large geographic area while considering the unique characteristics and challenges of each landscape. The combination of landscape-based approaches with cultural and political context facilitates the development and implementation of effective strategies to mitigate the risks of wildfires and protect communities and ecosystems.

Emergence of humans as the dominant species of the planet have come along with extreme manipulation of the earth’s systems to sustain this dominance. The Anthropocene has lasted a little over 200 years has perhaps seen the most shift from completely natural systems to requiring an additional man-made system to aid exponential growth of our species. Among earth’s systems, climate is one of the most complex factors determining energy balance of living organisms and determines energy gains and losses from organisms. India encompasses a wide range of complex territories with rich biodiversity living alongside some of the world’s highest population densities. Historically the Indians have lived and adapted to these resource abundant terrains through traditional ecological practices that aligned with the ecological systems and governed the socio-cultural practices. The current globalised world has been built upon with technological, infrastructural, sociological political and capitalistic growth has wretched devastating effects on the environment that supports us. India being a colonised country and exploited for its resources for centuries still holds traces of it in the infrastructural and production systems, in this case in the Periyar-Vaigai river basins. The region characterised by complex terrain, excessive manipulation of landforms and alteration of its resource cycles especially in water cycles by storing water in multiple dams experiences excess water flows during monsoons, causing flooding on its western slopes and proves to be the only hope for drought prone region on its eastern side. Governing such complexities lies with arbitrary administrative borders dividing the control between different states and various different departments controls the flow and management of resource which often falls short of preventing catastrophes or just management of resources. Extreme weather events in the recent past has exasperated the effects in these fragile habitats, thus the project aims to firstly mitigate the risks associated with failing monsoon, further restore the balance of the ecological system in the region. By building back resilience through co-habitation of social-ecological systems, aligned to nature using human knowledge the design aims to place value on nature rather than exploit it. The project envisions the transition from a local adaptation towards building up the system on the regional scale. It deals with primary production, anthropogenic control with respect to grey infrastructure, values and the role of ecosystems in maintain this balance. By synchronising these various systems the projects attempts at bringing back a dynamic equilibrium to this region, through methods like literature reviews, synthetic cartography and research by design.

The urgent need to decarbonize the energy sector marks the beginning of a post-fossil fuel era, leading among others to a significant decrease in coal production and a corresponding shift towards energy from renewables. This transition will bring changes spatially but also socio-economically and will affect primarily coal mining communities as their primary economic driver gradually declines. This thesis sets out to investigate the coal phase-out as happening in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland - Europe’s ‘coal heartland’. It focuses on the spatial aspect of it, a twofold challenge, that stems from the two contradictory conditions: the abundance of vacant land (land supply) that results from the coal phase-out and depopulating-shrinking trends in these coal regions and the spatial pressure (land demand) that the emerging deployment of renewables triggers in combination with possible unregulated land takeovers. The thesis conceives the coal regions as a systemic zone and proposes a shift to another form of the carbon economy, one based on forestry. It builds upon a timeline of actions starting from the phase-out of coal and shapes a narrative for a transition to a more sustainable and lower-carbon-intensive economy in the affected areas. The project approach this with a multiscalar perspective, zooming gradually to Lusatia, a historic region marked by many years of intensive lignite mining, an area in which four lignite extraction sites are still operating, and proposes a systemic approach to how another form of use in this cluster of mines could affect the ongoing depopulation in the area and care for the damaged and exhausted environment by fostering economic growth through sustainable timber harvesting and the creation of valuable ecosystem services that will trigger biodiversity growth. Last it looks at the area around Cottbus, where a former mine, and a currently active one, Jänschwalde mine, have shaped a unique landscape, surrounded by the characteristic pine forests of the region, and small scattered settlements. Spatial elements and their synergies are unraveled that facilitate sustainable wood production, the energy transition, and the care of natural ecosystems. The project works with a timeline spanning from 2025 until 2090, during which the area transforms as forests take over and grow while at the same time, several settlements and infrastructures decommission, depopulate, shrink and retreat. The final outcome inspires an alternative understanding of the coal regions, one described by a ‘spatial growth-retreat dynamic’ that builds upon the shrinking built environment and expresses itself with constant fluxes of carbon storage and carbon releases.

Murcia, one of Spain’s autonomous communities, is located in south-eastern Spain. The region is a gigantic irrigation machine operated by farmers, cooperatives, and increasingly foreign-owned multinationals or large supermarkets that either cultivate their own land or lease from smaller plot owners. It comprises a sector that has managed to make south Spain the “orchard of Europe” with a profit margin of more than 900 million euros in the Segura river basin and over 100,000 direct jobs associated. The industry is dependent on the immense engineering works of the Tajo-Segura transfer, a major infrastructure that transports water from the North to the South. Water is considered the most valuable resource in the region. There is a tremendous system of exploitation underneath the ground, formed by wells, pipes, and desalination plants, many of which are neither authorized nor monitored. This setting is damaging the Mar Menor lagoon, the largest hypersaline lagoon in Europe, and its natural ecosystems; groundwater is overexploited and polluted with nitrates, despite the fact that European regulations mandate its protection. This intensive system of production is also dependent on an increasing migrant workforce that seeks a better level of liveability in the European context. The distribution of immigrants in the territory is unequal and is conditioned by the structure of the labor market and the primary sources of demand for immigrant labor. The poor conditions of habitability, overcrowding, and lack of privacy have obvious negative repercussions for immigrant communities. Tensions in daily neighborhood relationships inevitably arise. The project Agroecologies for the Stateless is focused on the interrelation between intensive agro-industry systems and the exploitation of a flexible migrant workforce, located in a river basin environment. The thesis attempts to put a value on nature, reconsidering agricultural cultivations and the mechanisms that support it, and in parallel, seeking a new material basis for the coexistence of local communities, in search of a viable alternative for the restoration of the territory’s imbalance.

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.

Food. It is grown, processed, distributed, sold, eaten and then oftentimes carelessly discarded. In the European Union, 88 million tonnes of food waste is produced each year, while the Netherlands stands out as the EU’s largest producer. Food waste causes soil degradation, emits significant amounts of greenhouse gasses and can contribute to poorer respiratory health. Moreover, food waste is also representative of our growing disconnect with natural systems and subsequent unsustainable lifestyles. Yet, annually, more natural habitats are destroyed to make way for agriculture and livestock, often in response to providing for a growing population. However, there can be a reimagination of a more circular bio-based economy and food supply chain that lessens the pressure on the earth. The existing infrastructure of the Port of Rotterdam and its surrounding areas provide a fertile landscape in which this can take place. Additionally, while reducing food waste, intensifying social segregation and inequality concerning ethnicity, income and urban/non-urban divides in Zuid-Holland can be addressed to ensure environmental, economical and social robustness and longevity. Solutions for problems relating to food waste, and social segregation and inequality, have then been translated into a spatial vision and strategy to realize a more circular and inclusive food supply chain in Zuid-Holland by 2050. The vision and strategy are based on holistic analyses of the spatial distribution and character of the current linear food supply chain and demographic studies of the inhabitants of Zuid-Holland. This is then supported by policies and strategic projects that aim to use and build onto existing frameworks and spatial conditions to achieve the overarching aims. Key drivers of the vision and strategy include a transition of the port’s current fossil fuel economy to a regional hub for organic fertilizer production to be exported domestically as well as internationally. Additionally, a network of community exchange centers and a matrix of interfaces together aim to change the spatial and societal fabric of Zuid-Holland. To do this, they provide space for members of the same and different communities to share knowledge, experiences and tools, as well as re-establish connections with the natural world.

Human driven pollution is causing irreversible damage to the habitability of our planet. Due to these environmental concerns, it has become imperative to move away from petrochemical dependency as this industry contributes significant greenhouse gases causing air, soil and water pollution. About 85% of the petrochemical industry that travels through the port of Rotterdam goes towards fuels for mobility, this is a critical bottleneck that requires careful consideration. To ensure a sustainable province in terms of both a liveable province as well as economic prosperity policy is set up by means of communicative rationality between all actors (commercial stakeholders, residents, consumers, etc.). In 2060 all our vehicles will run on electricity from sustainable production sources, such as solar and wind. We will travel less and more efficiently in part by improving spatial proximity to (social) functions. To aid this mobility transition, biofuel potentials will be optimized to phase out the existing infrastructural dependencies by 2040. After which a complete build down from all polluting mobility fuels will be put into action. This phase allows different actors to cultivate and experiment with sustainable waste–to– value connections between stakeholders by optimizing biofuel potentials from regional waste. To make this transition succeed, the mobility and fuel transition is brought on through the three pillars: 1. sustainable connections, 2. waste to value and 3. consumer patterns. Allowing for an integrative transition in line with the global move towards a circular economy and a more healthy and liveable environment. As a result of this transition the petroleum–industry leaves waste spaces that require transformation. By creating a toolkit to assess different typological waste spaces, petrol stations, terminals and refineries will be transformed into residential, office, cultural, green and other functions after the soil is properly remediated.

In the past decades, the port of Rotterdam has been considered as one of the main engines of the Dutch national economy, since it is the largest hub for fossil fuels in Europe. The province of South-Holland and the Port of Rotterdam hereby form the heart of the economic centre of the Netherlands, contributing to 21% of the national GDP. However, the economic growth and prosperity of the region is inevitably linked to CO2 emissions and pollution. On the local level, the petroleumscape produces an invasive effect on the livability of its direct environment, exposing the local population to the burdens of the financial gains of the petrochemical industries. Also, we urgently need to transition towards a more sustainable energy system due to growing risks as a result of climate change. This poses a challenge to the region, since the main driver of the current industry is based on a highly centralized energy system. Such systems are not fit to make use of locally perceived potential of renewable energy sources. In the transition towards a distributed energy system, ecologic, social and economic challenges with strong spatial components arise in the region of South-Holland. Therefore, this strategy aims for an approach for giving shape and meaning to the energy transition in the province of South-Holland. Our team explores the way in which decentralization of certain building blocks in the mechanisms of energy production, conversion and storage could deliver a more democratic, self-sufficient and resilient system. Simultaneously, it should empower the local economy. By rearranging and reimagining the configuration of space in the port region, new spatial layers come to existence, which are oriented towards improving social and ecological structures. Once the polluting industries transform into cleaner industries, new spaces and opportunities open up for sustainable redevelopment of the waterfront. Space for recreation, flora and fauna will bring about a more gradual transition from port to city to hinterland. The sum of all interventions will contribute to the global objective of mitigating climate change, while reintroducing spatial justice and creating meaningful connections between industrial, rural and urban landscapes in the region.

The province of South Holland is a region in the Netherlands that can be characterized by its flourishing economy. The place where the vein of the river Maas stretches out over land and the Port of Rotterdam has settled in as a strategic trade-point. Moreover, the abundant agricultural sector in Westland holds accountable for not only multiple glasshouses, but also many livestock farms in the province. When it comes to social inclusion in this big trade-port frame, the disconnection between the workers of the port to the chain of trade they are involved in is clearly noticeable. At the same time, farmers have no relation to the port industries and chains of distribution and cooperation. This said, the vision strives to transform the linear, incoherent and patchy economy into a bio-based economy, truly rooted on circular and cooperative hallmarks. Enclosed within is a strategy that embeds entirely the waste-chains that can be found in both the Port and the agricultural sector and have currently been underused. The idea of generating bio-energy from processed waste flows from glasshouses and farmers ensures that the production runs on bio-based means. To completely close the cycle, the vision enhances the port provision of CO2 through pipelines underground to the glasshouses in the Westland, as it further supports cultivation of crops and helps to reduce unsustainable energy consumption. New cycles based on waste, unveil new landscape demands in the Province of South Holland, in which waste streams can be treated, traded and re-used for new purposes. These are zones with high potential to become spots for the exchange of knowledge from both parties (Port and agricultural sector) on how to strive and cooperate in the transition towards a circular and cooperative economy, in the near future.

The first decades of the 21st century are defined by an expected shortage of fossil resources and an emerging climate crisis which make the transition towards renewable energy resources not only inevitable but also urgent. In the process of this transition, the Port of Rotterdam, associated with the biggest fossil fuel industry landscape in Europe, is confronted with the danger of becoming a drosscape. As the Province of Zuid Holland attempts to deal with this challenge under the umbrella of circularity, new issues regarding environmental and social justice in the whole area arise and call for a coordinated planning effort towards a just transition. This effort begins by answering how can the province use the obsolete fossil fuel infrastructure to transform the port‘s material landscapes fostering spatial justice and balancing the problematic relationship between natural and man-made systems. Consequently, the project decodes the layers of the material, social and environmental dimensions investigating the critical issues that associate with the port‘s distinctive territories. In parallel, it defines the main concepts that can instruct this just transition arising from the fenced urban and port districts towards the whole province and combining top-down with bottom-up planning processes. As the project evolves in time, starting at the most critical territories as nodal points and involving all the different actors, it takes the form of a central green-blue spine that meets Zuid-Holland‘s energy demands while embodying a redefined symbiosis between nature and human. The result defines a new paradigm for the energy transition and the remediation of fossil fuel drosscapes that incorporates material circularity, environmental and social justice under the concept of “Energy Habitat“.

To achieve a circular economy in South Holland by 2050, the construction and demolition sector must use resources efficiently, close materials loops and work with fewer emissions. Currently recycling building materials is already the approach. Yet, since this costs a lot of energy and results mostly in downcycling, it is not ideal as a long term solution to achieve a durable circular economy. Adding to this, is the space limitation within the continuous growth. The usage of the existing space and infrastructure has to be optimized. This research is answering what is the best strategy to close material loops in South Holland while reusing the existing water infrastructure, amplifying it with integrated (data) networks and improving socio-spatial justice with circular hubs. The research is being executed by analysing the most efficient waterways to use in the area, defining transformation locations according to a data-driven matrix and designing the most efficient circular hub network possible. The waterways will connect circular hubs on 3 scales, a regional processing hub, a city storage & purchase hub and a flexible last mile hub. Transporting materials and goods in between the circular hubs helps in reducing CO2 emission and it can substantiate traffic on the roads. This leads to less busy highways, safer city centres and efficient use of transport. All the logistic flows and used-material flows come together in the Virtual realm, where all used-material data is accessible and a twin-region is ensuring spatial justice. Therefore the concept of Virtual X Water is the answer to define the transition towards a circular economy in 2050.

The future poses a major problem of feeding 9 billion people by 2050, while the current system of agriculture in itself is unsustainable and demands resources which exceed the planetary boundaries. Further continuing this trend of exploitation and destruction of ecology will only worsen the planetary stresses the Anthropocene has established. Hence emerges the urgent necessity to reorganize and reinvent our current food system towards a sustainable and circular one to sustain life on our planet. Accordingly, the primary goal of this project is to achieve sustainability in the food sector, thereby achieving circularity and food security. The Netherlands has an extraordinary position in the global market and is globally leading in agricultural research, technology and innovation. Therefore it could prove to be fruitful to develop a regional sustainable agricultural model that could become a role model for sustainable agriculture globally. The vision is to reduce the spatial impact of our food system while discontinuing the destruction of new habitats. To achieve this, a healthy diet must be embraced, which not only proves to significantly improve our health but also facilitate a transition towards a healthier planet. By evaluating the spatial, environmental and health impacts of the current model, the negative externalities at each stage of the food sector are investigated. The diversification of the crops to be grown within South Holland is crucial in order to facilitate the transition from a food exporter to a self-sufficient region with respect to the food sector. To encourage more sustainable food production and enhance the relationship between people and their food production, it is invaluable to invest more power in the producers. Finally, the various steps involved in the food systems and the gap between people and the source of their food are reduced by initiating big food retail corporations to focus on food production. Thus, the transformation of the food industry through the integration of a sustainable agriculture model and reshaping the public’s perception of food consumption and dietary needs, will ultimately create a more healthy and balanced landscape, while aiming towards the collective goal of mitigating climate change.

Our modern food structure is unsustainable and fragile. Changes like climate crises, rising food demand, biodiversity loss, and the technological revolution will radicalize how and what we eat and produce. Whichever changes will happen, they will have an effect on the food system. In South Holland, this will happen with the transition to a circular economy. In order to deal with the unpredictability of these changes, this report proposes to create a resilient system. The main question that will be answered is ‘How can resilient food systems contribute to a circular agri-food sector in South Holland?’. In this context, resilience is the ability to ensure the provision of system functions in the face of increasingly complex and accumulating shocks and stresses. Through capacities of robustness, adaptability, and transformability a just transformation to the circular food economy can be ensured. The strategy Recipe for Resilience derives from this definition. Based on a network of a mix of three types of hubs, the strategy calls for a more widespread and integrated distribution of knowledge about food and the food system. These hubs are the Seeds, where knowledge and food produce germinates, the Melting Pot, common interacting ground for all actors, and the Mixers, the in-between spaces that are not transparent. Together, they supply a network facilitating producers, distributors, and consumers. Thanks to this high-functioning network of knowledge, the main goals of the strategy can be achieved. During and after implementation, there will be high stakeholder engagement through all layers of society, local food cycles with feedback loops to distribution centers and farmers, and the knowledge about it will be widespread throughout the South Holland population. The constant exchange of expertise will ensure feedback loops throughout all layers of the knowledge production. Through this constant adaptation and transformation, a resilient system can be achieved.

Plastic is one of the most visibly polluting elements in our environment. From big plastic accumulation zones at sea to microplastic entering our everyday drinking water, plastic is becoming a more evident pollutant every day, which is damaging ecosystems, marine life and human health. This paper will envision a possible solution for plastic pollution in North West Europe, through the retrieval and recycling of plastic, and by proposing an alternative for plastics in the current textile industry; algae. The strategy of this project aims to create a more circular and local economy by envisioning how substituting bio-plastics in a specific industry can be a solution towards minimising overall plastic pollution. Drawing on climate change as an environmental impactor; algae bloom, which is seen as a negative climate change product, will in this project become a catalyst for a change within the textile industry by making bioplastics. Through introducing a new perspective on how the relationship between consumer hubs and production hubs could be adjusted to become more sustainable, this project aims to showcase a solution that could be implemented in other areas with plastic pollution, by taking North-West Europe as a test case. Simultaneously, the project aims to pinpoint how crisis can become an opportunity in times like these.

The Earth is experiencing an increase in global surface temperature due to a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly caused by the production of fossil-fuel-based energy using non-renewable resources. The heavy industries, predominantly comprising refineries, are the primary contributors to these emissions. As the primary source of energy for these industries is also fossil-fuel-based, the European Green Deal emphasizes the need for an energy transition. However, renewable energy production requires a large area, and the current energy grids are overloaded due to the lack of energy storage possibilities. A potential solution to the storage issue could be the implementation of green hydrogen. As refineries are expected to be decommissioned soon, hydrogen plants could be established in their locations, repurposing the existing infrastructure of pipelines and storage facilities. These plants would enable circular energy systems, converting hydrogen to energy using the green hydrogen production method of electrolysis, and vice versa, using fuel cells. Moreover, these redevelopments could be implemented on a larger scale, resulting in the creation of a hydrogen backbone in the Eurodelta, connecting the industrial clusters within this area and making the energy system more resilient. For the execution of a hydrogen energy system in the Netherlands, a strategy has been proposed that involves a centralized main hydrogen production and storage zone in the Port of Rotterdam, including new industries with hydrogen input and future high energy-consuming industries. Renewable energy production would be installed using offshore vertical-axis wind turbines and onshore horizontal-axis wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and biomass. This approach would also allow for the introduction of additional green areas, improving working conditions and air quality for the re-educated industrial workforce. In addition, a second strategy involves the implementation of a decentralized energy system in an agricultural landscape in the Municipality of Zutphen. These exemplary areas can be used as models to implement this idea in similar regions across Northwest Europe. Future research could focus on technological innovations, economic feasibility, and additional limitations of the introduction of hydrogen energy systems, ensuring the return of industries as new green hubs.

The Netherlands has set the ambitious goal to have a fully circular economy by 2050. The Port of Rotterdam (PoR), the largest and busiest port in Europe, has strong potential to become a future circular hub. The PoR has been a major player in the seaport industry for centuries with, among others, a strong logistics sector and a robust shipbuilding industry. However, the Netherlands does not have a solid shipbreaking sector. During 2016 - 2020, an astounding 86% of the vessels that were serving Dutch beneficiaries were scrapped in the Global South. To achieve a circular maritime manufacturing sector in just under 30 years, collaboration between stakeholders is needed to realize innovative solutions. The research question is therefore how can cross-pollination between the shipbuilding industry, knowledge sector, and local makers lead to a circular ship manufacturing sector? A combination of literature review and research by design was applied to gain insight into the required changes in the material and waste flows, and the possible role of the Makers industry in realizing a Dutch circular maritime manufacturing sector. It is expected that the educational needs and skills required of the labor force will have to evolve to fit the circular economy, therefore, the requirements to ensure a just social transition were investigated. The results are a spatial vision for a circular maritime manufacturing sector anchored to the existing waterway networks of South Holland, and a road map to implement this vision. By 2050, South Holland is the leading creative maritime region, where stakeholders in the Randstad collaborate on innovative solutions based on a shared maritime identity, respect for nature, and accessible physical learning and working environments. With the projected sea level rise, achieving a circular ship manufacturing sector is poised to play a crucial role in realizing a resilient water-based future.

At the moment, 23,5% of total waste production in the Netherlands comes from the construction sector. Therefore, in view of international agreements and the developing climate crisis, by 2050 this construction- and demolition sector should be transformed into a circular system that limits CO2 severely. It is important to bear in mind that current waste collection and waste treatment in the Netherlands are often separated and that it is a system that does not integrate social and spatial aspects, such as education or embeddedness in the urban fabric. These processes lack in optimal use of existing spatial systems in order to stimulate a sustainable circular flow of materials. In order to tackle this problem, we envision to integrate several systems of existing waste collection stations and treatment facilities and involve citizens in the waste system rejuvenation. In order to achieve this, we build upon the existing network of waste collection stations, by transforming it into a multi-functional system. Adding social values to the existing systems such as educational facilities and maker spaces improves their spatial quality and contributes to more public awareness about these systems. In order to achieve this, we propose to integrate systems into the urban fabric and improve the dialogue with the cities in the South Holland region. However, the unique identity of each location requires a multi-layered approach, consisting of central hubs and local- and flexible spokes. The central hubs emphasize logistical optimization of circular material processes, while the local and flexible spokes focus more on public awareness creation. The local spokes do so through integration with the city and the flexible spokes with a more adaptable character by being related to construction sites. To determine the functions and characteristics of each site, the regional strategy will take into account all individual spatial, environmental, social, and technical characteristics in order to achieve the best interaction between them. The multi-scale integration and rejuvenation of the system improve the efficiency and the sustainability of waste collection, with an impact on the spatial qualities of the waste collection stations. In turn, this leads to added social values and crucial society-wide awareness for the transition and active engagement of citizens in the circular economy.