Restoring Systemic Proximities

Abstract

Uncertainty posed by Climate Change brings control approaches to environmental processes and dynamics into question. In the Netherlands and particularly in the Dutch River area (Rivierenland in Dutch) narratives have already shifted towards an adaptive planning (Davoudi, 2013). However, there is still a need to go beyond the physical cultural and programmatic separation between rivers -active areas in flood management- and the urbanized territory -passive areas in flood management-. The definition of these dualities in the Dutch territory not only feeds a model based on vulnerability, but it also leaves the problem of a fragmented landscape unsolved. Aiming at the enhancement of adaptive territories and the embracement of uncertainty, the thesis proposes the operationalization of an approach based on enhanced connectivity throughout the territory, where every part of the urbanized territory takes a role in the active management of floods and ecosystem restoration. An approach aiming at restoring systemic proximities between culture and nature and between local land management and territorial water safety.

The main design outcome of the thesis is a transformation pathway towards the hybridization of the territory by increasing ecological densities and buffer capacities per land management unit. A pathway where synergistic coupling of functions are activated locally, triggering processes of innovation and cultural appropriation of the proposal, as opportunities for emerging ecosystem-based production models.

The graduation research is positioned within an emerging urban paradigm, one that re-defines the act of urbanization as an act of re-territorialization (Deleuze and Guatari, 2000), where land uses are associated to evolutionary land roles that different occupation patterns perform in the establishment of a more symbiotic relation with the ecology in which these are embedded.
Sources: Davoudi, S., Brooks, E., & Mehmood, A. (2013). Evolutionary resilience and strategies for climate adaptation. Planning Practice & Research, 28(3), 307-322. Guattari, F., & Deleuze, G. (2000). A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press.