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Back to the Commons / Introducing Regenerative Agricultural Networks in the Eurodelta
Design Research Project
Research Team / Kirthan Shekar, Nancy Nguyen, Stefania Saridou, Raven van der Steen and Willemijn Hoogland,
April 2023
South Holland, the Netherlands, Eurodelta
Through changing existing paradigms of nature conservation, this project suggests an alternative approach to understanding the possible interrelations between nature and agricultural practices. In recent decades, technologies, new agricultural trade policies, environmental regulations, and intense economic competition, combined with fierce competition for land, have led to the development of intensive farming. This has resulted in monofunctional, homogeneous agricultural landscapes that fragment natural ecosystems and diminish both natural and cultural diversity.
The vision uses the dual crises as a solution, rather than viewing them as the source of the problems. The Commons represent a new way of practising agriculture, where land, knowledge, resources, and financial risks are shared among farmers in a socially just manner. In addition, these shared landscapes reflect a social context in which farmers are considered environmental stewards, sharing responsibility for maintaining an ecologically balanced system.
Mapping of nitrogen landscapes in the Eurodelta region and its spatial causes identifies the critical spatial elements leading to the current socio-ecological crisis the various media—air, water, and land—through which pollution occurs, as well as the main land uses and economic sectors contributing to it: pastures, agriculture, and ports/industries. By rethinking the industrial ecology of nitrogen flows, as illustrated in the section, these land uses are systematically reconfigured based on their nitrogen flows by introducing dynamic land-use strategies, such as land rotation based on soil nitrogen content and the production capacity of the land for these uses. The vision for the Port of Rotterdam, Westland, Voorne-Putten, and Delfland is highlighted in the axonometric, which shows the nitrogen flows and the main spatial elements—public, communal, shared, and private. The scheme of common grounds, land rotation, and environmental stewardship can be scaled up to the Eurodelta to create conditions for landscape defragmentation and nitrogen balance. A new interscalar institutional mechanism is proposed for the land and nitrogen crisis management for holistic stakeholder participation and policy reviews. At the municipal level, the design is coded into a flowchart that defines site-specific conditions to guide the placement of spatial elements. This approach is demonstrated in the Voorne-Putten area, south of the Port of Rotterdam, through a common ground network configuration.