Germany is on a path of building significant amounts of new housing stock which implies high resource use and associated emissions. However, fundamental principles of national spatial development are not in line with these policies and substantial sustainability transitions still lack legitimacy in parts of society. These parts of the nation spatially coincide with areas where the people’s basic needs are not met as well as in other areas. This thesis explores how interlinking notions from the theory on human needs satisfaction with cultural politics can help to build legitimacy which is a precondition for substantive societal transformations such as introducing satiation for sustainability purposes. Achieving this legitimacy makes sustainability transitions feasible. The interlinking can be used to create criteria for practices that are capable of putting this interlinking into action. These criteria are:
- Synergistic satisfying behaviour
- Outside of traditional market logics
- Bottom-up in nature
- Integrative mode of operation
- Networking
Spatial types for strategic degrowth prefiguration are developed and tested in the city of Dessau. Implementing these can support society moving towards introducing satiation as a core principle. The implementation of the spatial types can happen inside of the existing urban fabric and has the potential to utilize spaces that are under-utilized right now like fallow areas or vacant buildings. Starting off from the existing elements in space, physically and programmatically, greatly increases the feasibility of such approaches.

The Netherlands has created a large nitrogen pollution problem in its soils, which is harming biodiversity. By intensifying and industrialized farming, by importing animal feed for dairy production and fertilizer for crop farming, too much nitrogen has accumulated in the soil. Consequently, ecological processes are disturbed due to eutrophication (over-feeding of nutrients), from which only a few species profit, causing other species to lose the competition and cease, with detrimental effects on reliant other species.
This project explores how this intensive/industrial farming can be substituted by more sustainable alternatives in which creating and maintaining biodiversity is key. An alternative system is proposed based on the spatial intergrading between cities and protected natural areas with typologies that focus on balancing food production and biodiversity creation. This alternative system is then detailed concerning the small-scale effects it has, the necessary process of policy creation and the necessary systemic changes as preconditions for a successful execution. The transformation design is developed along a framework of values which are reflecting on current best practices in the discipline of urbanism touching on issues of planetary boundaries, justice and transitional thinking.
Our key takeaways are to keep the city and adjacent areas productive, close to where consumption of goods is high but also where functions like education and food markets can be sensibly integrated. Further from the city and closer to already biodiverse and protected areas of the Nature Network Netherlands (NNN), the gradient leans more towards focussing on the creation of biodiversity. Humans and non-human species can find their thriving space on the gradient, food production is still an integral part as well. By creating a system in which farmers are working together, and are guided to create this balance on their farms and are paid for their efforts and the services they provide to society, they can be encouraged to change their farming practices for the better.