Schie Strategy
Care as Infrastructure in De Schie
Y. Lin (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
L.M. Calabrese – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
C.E. Smith – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
Care as Infrastructure in De Schie investigates how everyday practices of coexistence along the Schie canal in Delft depend on spatial, ecological, and temporal conditions that are rarely recognised in planning frameworks. Starting from rowing as an embodied way of reading the canal, the thesis maps relations between human and more-than-human actors, including rowers, coaches, fishers, recreational users, coots, geese, vegetation, water, edges, bridges, and maintenance regimes. Rather than proposing a total redesign of the Schie, the project develops an atlas of care capacities and critical conditions through which existing practices can be understood, protected, and gently amplified. The thesis argues that care is not simply a moral attitude or a service, but an infrastructural and spatial condition: a distributed capacity to maintain, negotiate, and repair the relationships that allow a shared landscape to remain alive. The final strategy proposes a spatial co-existence framework that works with existing rhythms, conflicts, and attachments, showing how design and maintenance adjustments can support a more democratic, multi-species public realm.