Agro-Urban Ecologies

Abstract

This research explores the potential of urban design to fulfill the role of integrating the domains of ecology, food, and climate change to achieve long-term restorative goals. Also, the potential of urban design to be the operator of a dynamic coexistence with nature by acting upon the diverse layers of landscape infrastructure and embedded socioenvironmental systems. After establishing the theoretical foundations on the domain intersections, this research adopts a research-by-design methodology that aims to answer the question of how can urban design simultaneously operationalize the intersection of ecological restoration, climate adaptation, and food production through spatial possibilities in an exploratory case study. Divided in three steps, the case study exercise starts by a pre-design step, that aims to achieve a contextual problem definition; subsequently, the design step focuses on developing a program, proposals, and evaluation of the proposals; and finally, the post-design step establishes a synthesis of the projections and discusses the wider knowledge acquired during the process. Through a contextual analysis of the case study of urban expansion in the Netherlands (Almere-Pampus), it is revealed that territorial dynamics, the trade-offs between current land use, and also the political context of the site are intertwined with its landscape infrastructure, that is vulnerable to sea-level rise. Furthermore, by adopting local references of “building with nature” approaches, it establishes a projective design exercise to investigate the potential of answering the research question through the proposition of a renaturalization process grounded on an agroecosystem that functions on base of local habitats. The results of the research indicate the potential of endogenous forms of production and land use to coexist with natural dynamics and guide the spatial design of multifunctional backbones. Also, it reveals the possible agency of a reformed countryside to be part of a decentralized water infrastructure that guides renaturalization efforts, integrating local actors and agenda demands.