This essay reports on a ‘living lab’ approach to develop a new understanding of below- and above-ground ecological processes as the foundation for robust urban forest habitats. This experimental approach includes a series of design and implementation projects in the city of The Hague, the Netherlands. In contrast to mainstream greening projects led by local governments, these experiments enable urban trees to form more robust forest-like systems by creating a symbiosis between soil (organisms), trees, plant communities, and species. As implemented reference projects are limited, a learning-by-doing methodology was adopted. A transdisciplinary team, consisting of landscape architects/designers, arborists, botanists, municipal and private green space maintenance organizations, has initiated, implemented, and monitored a series of pilot projects. Analysis of ten natural reference locations in the surrounding countryside has helped to define natural and forest-like soil conditions and plant communities for the three living lab locations in the city. Local residents have been engaged in the design, implementation and maintenance process. Sharing insights so far contributes to the transition of reconnecting soil, nature, and people in cities.

Population growth and urbanization are straining the limited space in the built environment. The business districts take up a great portion of this built space. These districts face climate change hazards and spatial emptiness due to their profit-driven foundation. Sustainable ambitions and strategic locations offer the potential to rethink business districts and integrate them into the living environment. Understanding business districts as potential workscapes, more socio-ecological inclusive business districts, is a new perspective. This research formulates a method to define the spatial quality of business districts through literature review and spatial analysis. A spatial analysis of forty cases in the Netherlands presents a higher spatial quality on more diverse landscapes. This indicates that diversification of the business districts’ landscape from monotone to multitone is needed to enable workscape development. Landscape-driven urbanism is needed to generate this desired level of quality. The research highlights the strategic location of edge-city business districts, situated between urban and rural areas, showing the potential to strengthen the urban-rural relationship. Further research on and by design is needed to enable workscape development.

Duurzame verstedelijking, klimaatadaptatie en biodiversiteitsontwikkeling vragen om een ontwerpaanpak die het landschap als uitgangspunt neemt. In een dergelijke aanpak staat het ontwerpen met natuurlijke en sociaalculturele processen centraal. Naast natuur zijn mensen een belangrijk element van een landschappelijke aanpak. Het landschap verbindt mensen, thema’s en schaalniveaus met de natuurlijke context. Het is de drager van de stad en biedt structuur, ecologische samenhang en variatie, maar is ook flexibel en multifunctioneel. L'urbanisation durable, l'adaptation au climat et le développement de la biodiversité nécessitent une approche de conception qui prend le paysage comme point de départ. Dans une telle approche, la conception intégrant des processus naturels et socioculturels est centrale. Outre la nature, l'être humain est un élément important de l'approche paysagère. Le paysage relie les personnes, les thèmes et les niveaux d'échelle au contexte naturel. Il soutient la ville et assure structure, cohérence et variations écologiques, mais il est également flexible et multifonctionnel.

Drylands, hyper arid to subhumid areas where rainfall is limited, are expected to expand due to climate change. Natural resources, such as water and food, are scarcer in these areas. Population growth and urbanization are putting even more pressure on communities living there, as well as on the urban fabric and ecosystems. How can nature based ecocities be created in these environments?

A pattern language, which is able to translate practical knowledge into substantiated spatial configurations that work in arid areas is missing in current theory and practice. The ´Urban Arid Green research by design project´ addresses a sustainable population growth and urbanization in arid regions via the case study in Tamansourt. Tamansourt is one of the 19 Moroccan new towns developed under the national Villes Nouvelles (New Towns) strategy. The city is still under construction, as the spatial analysis, site visit, and conducted interviews have revealed. The city has not reached its target population nor its desired level of urban activity yet. However, fundamental issues already manifest themselves.

The vision ‘Regreen to Rewild’ aims to counteract the pressures mentioned before, by developing a transformative framework towards an ecocity, taking the natural system as the basis (nature-driven urbanism). Tamansourt Ecocity gives purpose to the local community and a new identity to the city.

The transition described in this vision requires a systemic change, including environmental, policy and behavioral change. To support this shift, a common language amongst all future stakeholders has been created: the Urban Arid Green pattern language. This spatial language includes four pathways, of which each includes a group of development guidelines. One of the four pathways captures the original design guidelines for Moroccan new towns, as formulated by Al Omrane in 2010. The other guidelines focus on the biosphere, the urban fabric, and immaterial values.

The Urban Arid Green project shows how these generic patterns can be translated into a site-specific design which stakeholders can use in the city’s transition. This sets a precedent for other arid cities that aim to sustainably develop while under the pressure of scarce resources, climate change and population growth. Every landscape needs to adapt its own site-specific pathway based on the generic language, allowing unique dialects for different landscapes.

Urban agriculture is acknowledged as a multifunctional integrated concept capable of delivering various ecosystem services. Design-related empirical research which is regarded as crucial for introducing and exploring the transformation of design knowledge and practice. Despite the growing body of scientific evidence, operational guidelines for this topic are relatively scarce. The primary step in promoting practical value involves reviewing existing design knowledge and transformation status in empirical research. In conjunction with the existing design research findings, research through design is the only way to acquire and test design knowledge. Spatial design is acknowledged as a way to translate theoretical concepts into practical applications. This systematic literature review offers a comprehensive qualitative analysis of urban agriculture, ecosystem services, and design research. Additionally, it utilizes bibliometric visualization tools to clarify existing research gaps and propose reliable solutions. This paper reveals the imbalance of design research in delivering ecosystem services in urban agriculture through the review of 70 selected empirical research articles. The results suggest that the research for design approach is the most prevalent and offers abundant design knowledge. However, the relatively infrequent use of the research through design method obstructs the transition from implicit to explicit design knowledge, resulting in a shortage of available operational guidelines. Consequently, the study proposes a framework for systematic design knowledge of urban agriculture to catalyze the transformation of design knowledge. Finally, we outline the framework's composition and logic and elucidate its role in addressing research gaps.

The relationship between humans and nature is in permanent change. Where the city and nature used to be seen as enemies that needed to be kept away from each other, the current paradigm looks at a more symbiotic relationship. In this, man is seen as part of nature, and the city is seen as a determining factor in providing conditions for a rich urban ecology. In this study, urban conditions are seen as the starting point for urban design, enabling biodiversity to thrive. The aim of the research is to distill design strategies that enhance nature in an urban context. These strategies are derived from existing theories, the typical relationship between the city and nature, and the understanding of the natural landscape, and are applied in the heated, dry, and rocky conditions in the metropolitan region of Monterrey, Mexico. The main finding is that the city contains ecologies with their own characteristics, often distinct from rural or natural ecologies. These specific conditions can be amplified using adequate design strategies, which may lead to a greater biodiversity. For improving urban biodiversity, the perspective on the city shall be transformed from seeing it as an enemy of nature towards a symbiotic relationship between the two. At the same time, this perspective requires additional research into two main aspects: the way the city is able to create its own climatic conditions, and how landscape-based design can enhance the urban conditions in a way nature occupies these novel ecological niches.

Cities serve as both political and economic hubs. Sustainable development has long been acknowledged as crucial to the well-being of the environment, people, and society. In order to improve the current state of spatial affairs and attain long-term resilience, humanity is looking for reliable and sustainable urban planning approaches. Urban agriculture has received a lot of attention in recent years as an enduring and pervasive kind of landscape. Although the contribution of urban agriculture has been well documented in many studies on economic, social and ecological aspects, there has been little discussion of its practical value as a tool for spatial development. Additionally, the potential of urban agriculture as a landscape approach remains underdeveloped. In summary, current research and practice lacks a scientific framework for considering urban agriculture as a landscape approach to intervene in urban spaces. To this end, this paper explores the potential of urban agriculture as a landscape approach in sustainable urban planning and design through qualitative case study. Taking Songzhuang in Beijing as an example, we discuss and summarise the operational value and potential of urban agriculture from a design perspective. The findings suggest that landscape-based urbanism that includes urban agriculture can harmonise social, economic, environmental and ecological elements. Finally, in order to provide a generalised approach, this paper proposes a scientific framework for articulating a landscape approach to urban agriculture to guide future research and practice.

De bedrijventerreinen in Nederland zijn een belangrijke drijfveer achter onze welvaart en ze vormen de werkomgeving van velen. Momenteel staan deze terreinen vol met ‘grote dozen’ en is er een gebrek aan groen. Hierdoor wordt het er warm, is er sprake van wateroverlast en is de openbare ruimte niet ingericht op verblijf en recreatie. Dit maakt de terreinen onaangenaam voor werknemers, bezoekers en omwonenden. Met het nationale Werklandschappen van de Toekomst programma wordt beoogd om de duizenden bedrijventerreinen in Nederland te transformeren in klimaatadaptieve, gezonde, natuur-inclusieve en multifunctionele bedrijventerreinen. Dit is een belangrijke conditie voor de innovatie van de terreinen en daar gevestigde bedrijven. Het transformeren van bedrijventerreinen is een complexe opgave. Een dergelijke transformatie kan leiden tot een verscheidenheid aan ruimtelijke, ecologische, sociale en economische voordelen zoals een aangenamer microklimaat, ruimte voor multifunctionaliteit, bevordering van de biodiversiteit en van de gezondheid van de werknemers. Door kwalitatieve omgevingen te bouwen versterken we de economie. Om te komen tot deze nieuwe generatie bedrijventerreinen zoeken we naar integrale ruimtelijke oplossingen en handelingsperspectieven. Dit vraagt om landschapsbewuste gebiedsontwikkeling en waar mogelijk met versterking van de economische en innovatieve waarde van bestaande bedrijventerreinen. De terreinen zullen dus hun economische karakter behouden, maar hun kille uitstraling inruilen voor een aantrekkelijk perspectief. Hoe ontwerpen we voor een dergelijke integrale gebiedsontwikkeling? Deze bijdrage pleit voor een co-creatieve aanpak waarbij generieke ruimtelijke patronen worden ontworpen die toepasbaar zijn op de duizenden bedrijventerreinen in Nederland.

The transition towards nature-based cities has increasingly become a central focus in political–environmental agendas and urban design practices, aiming to enhance climate adaptation, urban biodiversity, spatial equilibrium, and social well-being as part of the ongoing socio-ecological urban transition process. Climate adaptation in cities is a complex problem and one of the main collective challenges for society, but the relationships between city managers and citizens as to urban green care still face many challenges. Parks design guided by technical-expert and globalised criteria; inflexibility from bureaucratic inertia; and citizens’ demands to participate in the urban green transition, sometimes without the necessary knowledge or time, are some of the challenges that require further research. In this study, we examine four long-lasting approaches to green-space management in four cities in the Netherlands, ranging from municipality-driven to community-driven management forms, and encompassing diverse spatial configurations of greenery within the urban fabric. Utilising the theoretical lens of the Social–Ecological Systems Framework, we employ a multiple-case-study approach and ethnographic fieldwork analysis to gain a comprehensive understanding of the norms, collective-choice rules, and social conventions embodied in each urban green management arrangement. The purpose of this research is applied, that is, to provide urban managers and decision-makers with a deeper understanding of drivers to promote effective collaborative management approaches, focusing on specific organisational rules that may contribute to more sustained planning and maintenance pathways for urban green spaces, regardless of changes in political leadership or significant external funding sources. The results of the investigated cases show that long-lasting collaborative management of forests and parks has established a set of collective-choice rules for resource transfer between municipalities and citizens, including non-monetary resources (such as pruning-training courses or guided tours that attract tourists and researchers). Additionally, these arrangements have been favoured by the existence of legal norms that enable co-ownership of the land, and monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms that offer a slightly different interpretation from the evidence identified so far in the scientific literature on collective resource management and organisational studies.

Om de waarde en potenties van stadsecologie beter te begrijpen is het van belang om het in het bredere perspectief van ecologie te plaatsen. Ecologie bestudeert de relatie tussen organismen onderling als ook de relatie met de niet-levende omgeving. Odum en Barrett hebben een interessante definitie die de link naar ons als mens in de stad wat makkelijker maakt, namelijk de studie van het ecologische ‘huis’ inclusief alle organismen daarin en alle functionele processen die het huis bewoonbaar maken, met de nadruk op het geheel of het patroon van relaties tussen organismen en hun omgeving.2 Volgens Forman is ‘stadsecologie’ het geheel van interacties tussen organismen, gebouwde structuren en de fysieke omgeving waar mensen geconcentreerd zijn.3 Een ecosysteem is een levend dynamisch iets; een ecosysteem op een bepaald moment, op een bepaalde plek is de uitkomst van allerlei condities en processen. Denk aan condities zoals de aanwezige bodem, of aanwezige soorten alsook aan de watercyclus, temperatuur of voedingsstoffen die al dan niet aanwezig zijn. […]

De Kennisregio aan Zee 2070 is een ruimtelijk-economische samenwerking tussen de steden Den Haag, Zoetermeer, Delft en Leiden, de provincie Zuid Holland en kennisinstellingen TU Delft, Universiteit Leiden en de Haagse Hogeschool. De missie: laat de economie bijdragen aan oplossingen voor maatschappelijke problemen; waar schaarse ruimte onze kennis en praktijk uitdaagt tot innovatieve oplossingen voor een veilige, gezonde en inclusieve leefomgeving. De samenwerking heeft tot doel bouwstenen te ontwikkelen voor een toekomstperspectief dat richting geeft aan de maatschappelijke en ruimtelijk-economische regionale ontwikkeling; een verbindend verhaal dat de organisaties aanzet tot langdurige samenwerking als basis voor een duurzame kennisecologie en brede welvaart. Maar hoe zit het kennisecosysteem van de Kennisregio aan Zee eigenlijk precies ruimtelijk in elkaar? En welke ruimtelijke condities zijn aanwezig en moeten verder ontwikkeld worden op de schaal van de regio? En wat betekent dit voor innovatiedistricten in bijv. Delft, Den Haag, Leiden en Zoetermeer? Hoe zit het met de regionale samenhang, diversiteit en complementariteit en waar zitten mogelijkheden voor verbetering? Hoe kan het landschap dienen als basis voor klimaat-adaptief en natuur-inclusieve ruimtelijke ontwikkeling gerelateerd aan bijvoorbeeld woningbouwopgave? Ondanks dat we hier nog niet alle antwoorden op hebben kunnen we wel een aantal ruimtelijke voorwaarden benoemen die de Kennisregio aan Zee 2070 productiever, sociaal en ecologisch inclusiever en toekomstbestendig maken; en slimme groei op de juiste plekken faciliteren. Deze publicatie beoogt een aantal ruimtelijke bouwstenen te benoemen en uit te werken in een regionaal ruimtelijk-economisch perspectief. Het natuurlijke landschap en de stedelijke context zijn de basis voor een duurzame kennisecologie en brede welvaart op de lange termijn. Centraal staat een eerste ruimtelijke verkenning, een regionaal ontwerp waarin wonen, mobiliteit, economie, water, natuur en landschap integraal bekeken zijn. Dit lange termijn perspectief maakt het mogelijk middels backcasting terug te redeneren met welke strategische regionale projecten morgen begonnen kan worden. Een aantal verdiepende essays geven inzicht in hoe stad en landschap als condities dienen voor ruimtelijk-economische ontwikkeling van de Zuid-Hollandse kustregio.

Challenges and potential are embedded in peri-urban agriculture under metropolitan sprawl, which requires a future-oriented development to address major trends such as the climate crisis, metropolitan sprawl, autonomy in food production and environmental quality issues. Following a design exploration in Oosterwold, Almere, The Netherlands, a biophilic design framework was used to demonstrate the effective transformation of a symbiotic peri-urban agricultural interface. The results embody a sequence of principles based upon biophilic design, urban metabolism, and bottom-up governance mechanism.

The current state of nature is concerning. The levels of biodiversity are rapidly decreasing; existing policies sketch ambitious objectives, but their effectiveness is relatively low. This is caused by a combination of three main elements: physical elements, planning processes, and psychological reasons. In dealing with these deeply rooted problems, following qualities are missing: attention to planning and design in nature-based solution policies, the gap between plan and execution of plans, and the transformation to eco-leadership of young people. In four consecutive years, research design studios have been executed, in which students collaboratively design eco-solutions for complex and urgent problems. The core subjects of each of these studios were four interlinked aspects of eco-design: (1) designing in parallel at master plan and concrete project level, (2) planning, designing and building within a short period, (3) the emergence and succession of ecosystems on site, and (4) ecological leadership practice. By investigating these aspects year after year, designing integrated and coherent solutions, and realizing these solutions in built form, an ecological spatial framework emerged within which smaller projects were and will be embedded. This way, the ecosystem on campus grows, matures, and develops as a self-regulating system. Moreover, new leadership emerged amongst the young participants in the research design studios

Current urbanization rates concentrate the ever growing demand for food, energy and water (FEW) resources particularly in cities, making them one of the main drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. The FEW nexus integrative approach offers a potential framework for sustainable resource management in cities. However, existing nexus evaluation tools are limited in application and often inadequate. This is primarily due to the FEW nexus intricacy, the tools’ operational complexity and/or the need to input comprehensive data that is often unavailable to users. Having outlined these current gaps, this paper introduces the FEWprint, an integrated carbon accounting platform that provides an accessible process for FEW nexus-based evaluations of urban areas. This spreadsheet-based framework is employed to calculate a consumption-based footprint derived from food consumption, thermal/electrical energy use, car fuel demand, water management, and domestic waste processing. A comparative assessment between six different communities reveals significant differences in total annual emissions. The food sector impact shows emissions ranging between 993Kg/cap∗yr and 1366Kg/cap∗yr in Amsterdam and Tokyo respectively, but is also the least deviating from all considered resource sectors. This holistic carbon footprint and considered food inventory will serve as a baseline for future integrated urban farming strategies and urban design proposals to be tested.

This book is about the first ten years of the master track in Landscape Architecture at the Department of Urbanism in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft. It delves into the personal, educational, didactical, organizational and, above all, substantive dimensions of the teaching of this appealing and highly relevant discipline at the academic level. The book has three parts. The first part – PROFILE – discusses the context and events that led up to the development of the master track and influenced its further development – from the very first landscape architecture related appointments and initiatives in the 1940s to the first day in September 2010 when the programme began with seven participants, and on to the celebration of its tenth anniversary in 2021. Infographics show the numbers and profiles of the student population and illustrate the structure of the master curriculum. The second section – WORK – contains snapshots of drawings, photos, collages and other graphic material produced by our students. The images are loosely grouped according to the five stages in the design process: exploring, understanding, conceptualizing, modifying and engineering the landscape. Interspersed with this kaleidoscopic variety of images you will find a series of short essays on key topics in landscape architecture education written by the present staff of the Landscape Architecture section. Finally, at the end of the book you will find a few lists – PEOPLE – of all those involved: students, staff and guest lecturers. They are the ones who made and still make the master track such a wonderful community to belong to.

During past decades, Territories in-Between (TiB) have gained increased attention among researchers in the field of urban planning and design. TiB are often considered to be underused, lack spatial quality and are under mounting pressure of urban densification. However, the rich diversity of land uses and abundance of semi-open spaces in the TiB provide unique habitats and social-ecological potentials, different from exclusively urban or rural landscapes. Therefore, urban planners and designers should reconsider conventional planning and design approaches towards these kinds of territories. The objective of this paper is to present a holistic planning and design approach towards TiB which acknowledges and strengthens its unique social-ecological potentials on local and regional scales. The new spatial planning concept that was developed through a ‘research-by-design’ process is called: The Recovering Membrane. This concept was developed for the city of Rotterdam. The Recovering Membrane is defined as a spatial layer of interaction between two distinctive living environments – urban and rural – and various human and non-human actors in them. The research puts forward that design for the TiB should consider the urban fringe as a distinctive kind of TiB with unique social-ecological potentials. Moreover, spatial design should strengthen existing spatial qualities of the TiB, to protect its pressured, yet highly valuable, characteristics. Additionally, local nature-based interventions can provide an important tool for placemaking in the TiB, especially when integrated with long-term and large-scale area transformations.

In this article a planning approach is proposed to accommodate different paces of urbanisation. Instead of responding to a single problem with a Pavlov-type of response, analysis shows that the transformational tempi of different urban landscapes require multiple deployment strategies to develop urban environments that are sustainable and resilient. The application of nature-based solutions, enhancing both human and natural health in cities, is used as the foundation for the design of deployment strategies that respond to different paces of urban change. The results show that urban characteristics, such as population density and built space is, partly, dependent on the underlying landscape characteristics, therefore show specific development pathways. To create liveable and sustainable urban areas that can deal holistically with a range of intertwined problems, specific deployment strategies should be used in each specific urban context. This benefits the city-precinct as a whole and at the local scale. Even small nature-based solutions, applied as the right deployment strategy in the right context, have profound impact as the starting point of a far-reaching urban transformation. The case-study for Oimachi in Japan illustrates how this planning approach can be applied, how the different urban rhythms are identified, and to which results this leads.

In the Anthropocene, climate impacts are expected to fundamentally change the way we live in, and plan and design for, our cities and landscapes. Long-term change and uncertainty require a long view, while current planning approaches and policy making are mostly short-term oriented and are therefore not well suited to respond adequately. The path-dependency it implies causes an irresolvable dilemma between short-term effect and long-term necessities. The objective of the research is to investigate an alternative planning and design approach which is able to overcome the current constraints and take a holistic long-term perspective. Therefore, the methods used in the study underpin a creative process of future visioning through backcasting and finding a dynamic equilibrium in the past as a primer for long-term climate adaptation. This way, the individual vulnerabilities of current sectoral policies can be leapfrogged and integrated into one intervention. This design-led method is applied to the northern landscape of the Groningen region in the Netherlands. This intervention is positioned as a re-dynamization of the landscape by re-establishing the exchange between the land and the sea. The findings in the study show that a long-term perspective on the future of the regional landscape increases climate adaptation and enriches the opportunities for viable agriculture, increased biodiversity, and a raised land that is not only protected against possible storm surges, but benefits from the sediments the sea brings. The economic analysis shows that a new perspective for farming within saline conditions is profitable on a fraction of the land, the biodiversity can be enriched by more than 75%, and the ground level of the landscape can be raised by one meter or more in the next 50–100 years. Moreover, the study shows how a long-term perspective can be implemented in logic stages that comply with the natural step-changes occurring in climate change.

Amsterdam aims to bring down its carbon footprint by 55% in 2030 and by 95% in 2050. For the built environment, plotted pathways towards carbon neutrality primarily revolve around the reduction of fossil based energy demand and the transition towards renewable energy production strategies. The consumption of food resources, and its significant corresponding carbon footprints, remain up to this day outside the scope of the city’s carbon accounting. At the interface of the building sector and the agricultural sector, under-explored possibilities for synergistic and sustainable resource management come to light. For a more holistic and veracious evaluation, this research expands the carbon inventory of the urban dweller with the food category and then explores, by means of a case study, a novel strategy for the decarbonisation of the built environment: urban pig farming in Amsterdam. A theoretical farming system is added to an urban context and coupled with the existing local resource flows, allowing for new output-input links. The capacity of the farm, i.e. the maximum number of animals at any time, is determined by the daily food waste output of the neighbourhood. A comparison is drawn with a conventional method for the energy transition: photovoltaic energy, for which two common array configurations are assessed. The three scenarios are evaluated on three aspects relevant to the energy transition of the built environment: avoided carbon emissions, produced thermal energy and produced electrical energy, normalised per square meter surface area. Carbon accounting shows that an integrated pig production facility of 495 m2, holding 79 animals, can potentially reduce the carbon emissions of Kattenburg by 218 tons (−5.6%) a year, i.e. 441 kg CO2/m2. The solar farm has a net impact of 42 kg/m2/yr if the panel array configuration is based on optimal panel angle and 77 kg/m2/yr if the configuration is based on optimal ground surface area cover. This study intends to spark further discussion on urban farming by showing that an integrated pig farm can potentially avoid between 6–10 times more carbon emissions compared to a solar farm.