Agroecologies for the Stateless

from Katerina Inglezaki Portfolio 2023

by Katerina Inglezaki

Urban rooms: Approaching the new urbanism

Master’s thesis for the Master of Science (MSc) in Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences (track: Urbanism)

Institution

Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)

Academic year

2021-2022

Supervisors

Nikos Katsikis

Tenure Tracker Assistant Professor Urban Design

Diego Andres Sepulveda Carmona

Assistant Professor Spatial Planning and Strategy

Location:

Murcia, Spain

Individual work

Institutional repository

Inglezaki A.C. (2022), Agroecologies for the Stateless: the case of Murcia, Spain, Master’s thesis, TU Delft educational repository: https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid:efcd2d59-499e-45a2-961d-a2a5ec132747?collection=education

Murcia, one of Spain’s autonomous communities, is located in south-eastern Spain. The region is a gigantic irrigation machine operated by farmers, cooperatives, and increasingly foreign-owned multinationals or large supermarkets that either cultivate their own land or lease from smaller plot owners. It comprises a sector that has managed to make south Spain the “orchard of Europe” with a profit margin of more than 900 million euros in the Segura river basin and over 100,000 direct jobs associated. The industry is dependent on the immense engineering works of the Tajo-Segura transfer, a major infrastructure that transports water from the North to the South.

Water is considered the most valuable resource in the region. There is a tremendous system of exploitation underneath the ground, formed by wells, pipes, and desalination plants, many of which are neither authorized nor monitored. This setting is damaging the Mar Menor lagoon, the largest saline lagoon in Europe, and its natural ecosystems; groundwater is overexploited and polluted with nitrates, despite the fact that European regulations mandate its protection.

This intensive system of production is also dependent on an increasing migrant workforce that seeks a better level of liveability in the European context. The distribution of immigrants in the territory is unequal and is conditioned by the structure of the labor market and the primary sources of demand for immigrant labor. The poor conditions of habitability, overcrowding, and lack of privacy have obvious negative repercussions for immigrant communities. Tensions in daily

Monitoring stations

Hydrographic network

Sub-catchments of river basin

Zones vulnerable to nitrates

Network of water retention ponds to improve connectivity and provide a range of ecosystem services

Enhancing dune dynamics in Dunas de la Llana

Preserving the salt marsh of San Pedro del Pinatar

Creating a vegetated foreshore connected to the urban fabric

Creating riparian zones for the stream of Rambla del Albujón

Restoring seagrass meadows Renaturalization of the Marina del Carmolí wetland

The Quaternary aquifer is highly polluted by fertilizer nitrates which is a great threat to water masses since it literally fertilizes phytoplankton in such huge quantities that it no longer allows sunlight to shine through water. As a result, the water turns green as happened in the Mar Menor in 2016 and the seagrass beds, unable to photosynthesize, die, a process known as eutrophication.

The hydrogeological functioning of the aquifers that make up the Campo de Cartagena aquifer is complex due to its geometry and high degree of anthropization. The sedimentary fill of the aquifer is mainly composed of detrital sediments (marl) with intercalations of highly conductive material (limestones, sandstones and conglomerates), which were deposited in the period between the Tortonian and the Quaternary. Years of drought led the CHS to authorize the extraction of brackish water, its desalination and use for irrigation in 1994.

Nitrogen excess*

Vegetables 45%

Citrus trees Non-Citrus fruit trees 28% 28%

*Data from Universitat Polytecnica de Valencia.

Since farming is a primary economic activity in the entirety of the region of Murcia and there is already a great investment interest in the land, the strategies presented here are working in line with this fact, attempting to restructure the kinds of cultivation and export as a means to moderate the existing intensive models and to pay respect to the natural systems they are based on.

The choice of strategic locations for new settlement insertions has been made based on existing urbanization patterns and their transportation connections. The logic of the strategy aims at creating semi-autonomous settlements in close connection to existing urban areas so as to accomplish the social integration of the migrant communities and reverse the current segregated status quo.

One of the fundamental goals of the project is to transform the landscape into a more resilient one, not only in ecological terms but also in productive terms. The territory will be altered according to the flood and drought resilience of the crops and a new labour balance has to be achieved. An equal balance can definitely not happen so some peaks will inevetably still happen in summer.

Territorial vision

Phasing and actors involved are initiated. keep satisfied

European Union agricultural initiatives

Valencia Polytechnic University

WWF Spain

Polytechnic University of Cartagena ANSE (Association of Naturalists of the Southeast) migrant agricultural workers empower

Interest

Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Environment national government Segura Hydrological Confederation

Ministry of Labor and Social Economy regional government fruit and vegetable wholesalers commercialization city governments biomass engineering tech companies residents of agricultural areas/ farmers decision makers

BiodivERsA (European Biodiversity Partnership) seasonal tourists engage/convince inform

Theories of SustainabilityPositions of care

Focus intensives weeks 1.5-1.6

Graduation Exploration

Institution

Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)

Academic year

2021-2022

Tutors

Taneha Cuzniecow Bacchin Raquel Hädrich Silva

Location:

Lesvos, Greece

Individual work

Over a first attempt of critical mapping, one can clearly observe the size of the issue in the perimeter of the Mediterranean, with a growing number of deaths and missing people every year. The patterns of relocation are of special interest in order to get an understanding of the political situation. Greece and Italy function as the main gateways of human flows via Turkey or via the sea. Thousands of people are being guided by smugglers under terrible conditions to reach the land, while the process of admission in the European context is chaotic and dubious, with FRONTEX, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, often being accused for its questionable actions. Filing for an asylum is an uphill struggle since in most cases there is no access to internet connection or legal aid and the waiting time leaves individuals in a state of limbo for months, even years. Hundreds of Non Profit Organizations are operating only on paper while draining EU grants. Focusing on the case of Greece as a more familiar setting for me, it is worthy mentioning the xenophobia rhetoric that has been steadily building over the last years. Politicians are taking advantage of the small host communities in the country’s periphery, whose economy and social tissue can hardly cope with such a crisis for their own benefit. The deepest concern on a national level is currently the protection of the borders and the closure of the refugee settlements. New plans for gated communities with hightech surveillance are on the way, erasing any sense of individuality and quality of life.

In this context of loss and separation, the protocol of care aims at restoring the values of human dignity and provision of one’s fundamental needs. Instead of multiplying models of multi-million euro closed facilities outside the urban fabric where there is no social input it is essential to envision a new model of care, one that respects and invests in human life.

Fig.18. Mapping the territories of power in Eastern Greece.

The case of Lesvos, Greece

Lesvos, the biggest island of the North Aegean Region has been the main gateway that refugees have been using to reach Europe from Turkey. Its capital, Mytilene, with a population of 38.000 people, has been meeting the burden of accomodating thousands of refugees since the latest humanitarian crisis of 2015 started.

Theories of Sustainability-Positions of Care

Health aid

Connectedness to the outside

Goals

Life rescue

Security/dignity

Integration and social cohesion

Phasing

Immediate

Medium-term

Long-term

Action

Adapt the former prison of Mytilene in the outskirts of the city into a permaculture farm that will function as a farm-to-table restaurant for vulnerable groups.

Maasvlakte

The Studio essentials course examines the phenomenon of urbanization (of sea/ land). This question requires a fundamental shift in perspective: urbanization can no longer be understood as a spatially bounded phenomenon; it must instead be examined as a comprehensive and extended process.

Second, the urban should no longer be regarded as a specific form or type of settlement space; it must instead be analysed as a process - a process that increasingly moulds more land and sea and repeatedly overwrites them.

And third, urbanization should not be taken as a one-dimensional phenomenon, but rather as a multiayered one that manifests itself on diverse levels. Urbanization includes the material structures and practices of the production of urban space as well as the various regulations of the use and transformation of the territtory and the modalities of everyday interactions.

We sought instead to find ways of mapping that are capable of portraying the multidimensional nature and plural determination of urban territories, using Maasvlakte as a case study of a massive man-made industrial territory.