CYCLIC URBANISM: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

CYCLIC URBANISM

Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Spring Studio 2016: Cyclic Urbanism

Racha Daher, Bruno De Meulder

K.U.Leuven, Master of Human Settlements, Master of Urbanism and Strategic Planning

STUDIO TUTORS AND COORDINATORS

Racha Daher, Bruno De Meulder

STUDIO SUPPORT TEAM

Julie Marin, Cecilia Furlan

PUBLICATION EDITOR

Racha Daher

FOR MORE INFO

MAHS / MAUSP / EMU Master Programs

Department ASRO, K.U.Leuven Kasteelpark

Arenberg 1, B-3001 Heverlee, Belgium

Tel: + 32(0)16 321 391 Email: paulien.martens@kuleuven.be

CYCLIC URBANISM: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

ISBN: 9789460189975

Wettelijk depot: D/2016/7515/17

Published by K.U.Leuven, Belgium in 2016 © Copyright by K.U.Leuven

Without written permission of the promotors and the authors it is forbidden to reproduce or adapt in any form or by any means any part of this publication. Requests for obtaining the right to reproduce or utilize parts of this publication should be addressed to K.U.Leuven, Faculty of Engineering – Kasteelpark

Arenberg 1, B-3001 Heverlee (België). Telefoon +32-16-32 13 50 & Fax. +32-16-32 19 88.

A written permission of the promotor is also required to use the methods, products, schematics and programs described in this work for industrial or commercial use, and for submitting this publication in scientific contests. All images in this booklet are, unless credits are given, made or drawn by the authors.

STUDIO PARTICIPANTS

Swagata Das | MAHS

Wenbo Fu | MAUSP

Gavriela Georgakaki | MAUSP / EMU

Elena Kasselouri | MAUSP / EMU

Israel Ketema | MAUSP

Mengling Li | MAUSP / EMU

Sven Mertens | MAUSP

Adam Prana | MAHS

Glenn Somers | MAUSP

Michaël Stas | MAUSP / EMU

Charlotte Timmers | MAUSP

Nghia Tran Dai | MAHS

Jingyue (Aris) Yan | MAUSP / EMU

Benjamin Vanbrabant | MAUSP / EMU

Maria Zouroudi | MAUSP / EMU

GUEST CRITICS

Eliana Rosa de Queiroz Barbosa

Margarita Macera Carnero

Erik Van Daele

Patrícia Fernandes

Cecilia Furlan

Hanne Van Gils

David de Kool Salima Kuen

Julie Marin

Jeanne Mosseray

Matteo Motti

Wim Wambecq

Guillaume Vander Vaeren Toon Vanobbergen

MANY THANKS TO:

Alvin Chua

Carmen van Maercke Caterina Rosso Patrick Willems Isabelle Verhaert

and everyone who offered insight

CYCLIC URBANISM

Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Spring Studio 2016: Cyclic Urbanism

Racha Daher, Bruno De Meulder

K.U.Leuven, Master of Human Settlements, Master of Urbanism and Strategic Planning

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Bruno De Meulder for making this possible, for sharing his knowledge and his advice, and for his limitless commitment to the development of the program.

Julie Marin, for her endless support, advice, and reference for the studio.

Cecilia Furlan for her support and involvement with the studio.

I would like to thank all the Guest Critics, as well as all those who took time off from their schedules to make themselves available to provide insights throughout the process.

The staff, for their behind the scenes work.

And of course, to the students and authors of the design research work represented here:

This book is dedicated to you, to display the fruits of your hard work.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

CYCLIC URBANISM

Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Volume 1

This book is part of a 3 volume series.

Volume 1 | Connecting Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Volume 2 | Cyclic Urbanism: Investigations for The Post-Mining Territory

Volume 3 | Cyclic Urbanism: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Table of Contents

Preface

Framework

0.1 Ecological Urbanism

0.2 Systemic Design

0.3 Cyclic Urbanism Part 1

1.0 Investigations for The Post-Mining Territory

1.1 Megalopolis, Greece

Re-configuring the Productive Territory: Design Explorations for a Post-mining Era

A History of the Future

1.2 Charleroi, Belgium Exploring Le Pays Noir: Design Investigations for a Productive Landscape

A History of the Future

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2.0 Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

2.1 Antwerp, Belgium

2.1.1 Re-connecting the 20th Century Belt of Antwerp: Valorizing the Blue and Green Network as a Qualitative Infrastructure for Future Densification

2.1.2 Synergies of Waste-Energy-Mobility: Towards a More Resilient 20th Century Belt

2.1.3 Stitching the 20th Century Belt: Towards a Healthy Urbanism for Future Densification

A History of the Future

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Preface

By 2050, the world’s population is estimated to have increased to almost 10 billion people (United Nations, 2015). It is also estimated that 70% of this popultion will live in urban areas (United Nations, 2015). This growth, as well as the steady shift from rural to urban, will add increased pressures on already limited resources to secure global livelihoods, and on infrastructural support systems, such as energy, food, mobility, water, and waste among others. In addition, increased density will add pressure on urban areas to provide qualitative infrastructure in the form of public space and in a way that encourages health, social mixity and co-existence.

On top of that, climate change and its impact on the environment and on habitable areas, poses a major threat to our planet and calls for a reevaluation of previous and current modes of urbanization. Diminishing fossil fuels call for a re-imagination of ways to provide alternative energy that can be renewed and replenished.

As such, the city is an ever-changing through time, eco-system that deals with multiple realities, across multiple discsiplines, and multiple scales (Mostafavi & Doherty, 2010). Top-down planning and the shaping of the form of the city (as artifact) without understanding the dynamics within which it operates, and critically evaluating and analyzing its logics, is an outdated, oblivious, and irresponsible way of dealing with the realities of the 21st century city.

There is no linear or singular way to deal with the city and its complexity.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Framework

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

0.1 Ecological Urbanism

In 1996 an article by Van der Ryn and Cowan in Theories and Manifestos, outlined a set of principles for ecological thinking in design. These principles stated that design that is ecological: has a deep understanding of site at the local scale - its local conditions and its people, presents accountability and consideration for environmental impact, footprint and portrays respect for nature with processes that regenerate rather than deplete, is a participatory process in which all voices involved are heard, and acts as a tool to educate and inform “our place within nature” (Van der Ryn & Cowan, 2006, p.168).

In 2010, Mostafavi in Ecological Urbanism went further to broaden ecological thinking as an ‘Urbanism’ to portray a holistic approach that reformulates the way we think about the urban. He discusses an urbanism that deals with multiple realities that transcend traditional boundaries between disciplines, between the public and private sector, between formality and informality, between rural and urban, between real and virtual, between the visible and the invisible. As such, it advocates an openness that allows a platform for dialogue, collaboration and negotiation, as a way to deal with the fluidity of the city. It advocates looking through multiple lenses, to generate creative strategies that are multi-scalar, synthetic and can respond to a multitude of issues, allowing for flexibility and for different realities to co-exist (Mostafavi, 2010).

Ecological Urbanism, one can say, is a form of urbanism that blurs the lines between architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and urban design. It advocates participation and looks at multiple dualities as strength as opposed to contradiction. It responds to social, political, economic, and cultural conditions and allows for future possibilities (Mostafavi, 2010).

0.2 Systemic Design

“

The city is a complex, man-made entity. Throughout the millenia of its history, the city has repeatedly been redefined in an attempt to understand its nature and effects, which change over time. What is a complex entity? One might say: a multifaceted arrangement of objects that interact in manifold ways. The arrangement in its entirety, also known as a “system”, possesses features that are not inherent in its individual parts. These are known as the “emerging” characteristics of the system. The city is a prime example: it is more than just an accumulation of buildings, and it cannot be explained by the characteristics of its human inhabitants alone” (Oswald & Baccini, 2003, p. 36).

Systemic Design looks to a region as a domain of flows where multiple processes that are inter-linked take place, so that a product in one process has a life in another. Similar to Ecological Urbanism, it is collaborative, flexible, fluid and open. It becomes strategic, trans-boundary and transdisciplinary, slides across scales, speeds, and systems (Bélanger, 2012, p. 301).

However, it focuses much of its attention on relationships between urban infrastructure, both soft and hard, constructing them into a dynamic working operation. It differs from Ecological Urbanism in that it highlights drawing (especially the section) as a mechanism to construct linkages. Interpretative maps and sections identify components and strategies within a system, link flows and processes between infrastructures, and create narratives between surface and subsurface conditions. The system is an operational method of dialogue among complex realities.

“ Geographic zoning, boundary realignment, strategic design, sub-surface programming, sectional thickening, and ecological engineering are some of the most influential mechanisms in the structural transformation of urban regions to affect the large-scale operational and logistical aspects of urbanization ” (Bélanger, 2012, p. 301).

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Landscape Urbanism

With the blurring of lines between the disciplines of landscape architecture, urban design and urban planning, Landscape Urbanism occupies a domain where landscape and urbanism can co-exist, work on each other’s strengths, in a symbiotic relationship. Each discipline acts as the other’s ‘bionic limb’.

Due to the synthetic and time-sensitive nature of landscape (plants take time to mature and hence, go through different phases), this has brought a metabolic dimension to urbanism that deals with operations that are sensitive to natural and social processes, to time and that are open to growth and change. And since natural processes alone cannot cope with urban growth, the shared discipline allows for a nurturing crossover that allows the ability to think about urban systems, soft and hard infastructures, and social dynamics in urban space through a system of operations that can grow through phase and change over time (Corner, 2006).

Waste(d)

“Nature produces waste as it grows” (Berger, 2005, p.48). So do cities. Dealing with waste whether in the form of actual physical waste, or in the form of waste space or land, and wasted resources becomes an important component in Systemic Design. We now live in the age of the anthropocene (Sachs, 2015), where man-made activity has threatened our eco-system. Since Systemic Design is about flows, processes and operations, and is rooted in the (ecological) idea that products of one process are inter-linked with another, it searches for creative ways to redirect waste and eliminate it from the stream. Waste is then no longer ‘waste’, as it is given a new life or is converted into another resource.

1.3 Cyclic Urbanism

Cyclic Urbanism attempts to combine the holistic approach of Ecological Urbanism as an open frame of mind that transcends boundary, discipline, scale and time, with the operational processes of Systemic Design, and in which strategies are constructed as part of a system that is circular. When applied to a region, it can instigate the transformation of regions. It is an urbanism that does not acknowledge ‘waste’ production, but rather redirects it into a new life, or adapts it to new function (Berger, 2005, p. 53). In that sense, waste is not produced, but is rather productive. It further translates the strategic operations of the cyclic system into specific, contextual and spatial solutions at the local scale, and explores how they convert urban space as a productive ground.

Based on the premise that urban design is not a linear, singular idea about how the city should develop, Cyclic Urbanism is a response to growing needs of habitation, resources, and dealing with real issues that cities and their communities are facing. It is about a rational process that is based on logics of the site in its regional, neighborhood, block and human scales. It analyzes site, diagnostically identifies needs, and is about problem solving, as opposed to making forms (for the sake of form).

To properly understand site, a thorough reading of the territory, and a revealing of the systems that compose it, is essential. Soil, water, waste, energy, food, people, demographic composition, and public space are some of those systems. Every site is unique and carries with it information in a complex layering of social, natural, and physical transformations that have taken place (or that have been erased) over-time (Corboz, 1983). Those need to be de-layered and revealed before an intelligent system of interventions can be constructed.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

The Studio

In 1956, Sert expressed that urban design aims to “find the common ground between architecture, landscape architecture and the city planner” (Krieger, 2005, p.114). 60 years later, we are still trying to find that shared ground.

The studio looks at the city as a lattice (Alexander, 1965) of systems, flows, and processes that are fluid and dynamic. It attempts to blur the lines between disciplines and boundaries, and between the rural and the urban. It attempts to laterally zoom in and out of site and across systems, through time to synthesize creative solution-sets that have the power to transform the city in ways that have not been thought about, and through narratives and visualizations that represent the territory from a different light. It uses a diagnostic approach to identify issues, and come up with new ideas, and to imagine new possibilities.

The city is too complex to be understood at a single scale. The studio attempts to move across scales and times to generate relationships that could create productive spaces that are linked between the larger and smaller scales. Each scale brings a different set of knowledge to light and allows for unique properties and processes that are “elastic and temporal” (Kahn, 2005, p. 295).

It attempts to look at changing processes and activities, attempts to accommodate for them, and allow them to co-exist, while eliminating ‘waste, wasteful, and wasted’ (Berger, 2006) from the process.

It kept an eye open to the strange urban spaces, the ‘terrain vague’, “where the city is no longer” (Sola-Morales, 1995, p.120), to question how these could be re-incorporated into logical systems and re-converted into productive spaces. It utilized a synthetic approach through phase and transformation over time, and questioned different ways in which voids in the city are empty but also full of potential (Sola-Morales, 1995).

The studio attempts to design for openness and flexibility in a city that allows for future possibilities and for “unexpected things to happen” (Pollak, 2006, p. 138). It attempts to read the city’s “palimpsest”, the physical territory, and the people compose it (Corboz, 1983).

It also attempts to identify different stakeholders that could possibly coexist as part of a system and come into a productive dialogue to make future changes happen.

Through data collection, site documentation, knowledge accumulation, and looking at the city through different lenses, it attempts to construct relationships between and across different realities and knowledge sets (Kahn, 2005, p. 287) that can allow for the existence of multiple realities,

In conclusion the studio attempts to approach the city as a “mobile ground” (Kahn, 2005, p. 290).

Studio Structure

Through the theoretical framework aforementioned, the studio included two separate themes:

1- Investigations for The Post-Mining Territory in Charleroi and Megalopolis

2- Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th Century Belt of Antwerp

What both themes had in common was the ecological frame of mind, the systemic approach, and a cyclic or circular process. They followed the same methodology.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Studio Methodology

Along with a theoretical framework, the studio participants began with a detailed analysis of infrastructural systems that impact the city. “To actually manage metropolitan growth requires dealing with needs like land conservation, water management, and transportation - that cut across jurisdictional boundaries“ (Krieger, 2005, p. 123). They studied systems of water, energy, mobility, food and public space - flows that go beyond their regions - to accumulate the intelligence that precedes solution. They further collected data and performed several field trips to document and understand the social and physical dynamics of place at the neighborhood and local scale.

After understanding the systems at play in their visible and invisible aspects, they set out to perform rigorous site analysis and fieldwork to understand the spatial and social realities, identify needs, and diagnose real issues. They then utilized their accumulated knowledge to reimagine and construct an intelligent, logical and circular system, that includes multiple and inter-linked infrastructures, and that is composed of ecological strategies. They then applied their system of strategies onto their sites to imagine and design the spatial qualities, which are transformed as a result of their constructed system. They visualized the transformations in the regional, city, neighborhood and human scales, and across time lapsed phases to imagine the future of the transformed urban space.

History of the Future

In addition they were asked to send postcards from the ‘future’ of their city (Antwerp, Charleroi, or Megalopolis) every week for 8 weeks. From those as a group, we construct a History of the Future.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

1.0

Investigations for The Post-Mining Territory

- Megalopolis, Greece

- Charleroi, Belgium

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Location: Megalopolis, Greece

37.3841° N, 22.0715° E

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

View to the urbanized area of Megalopolis

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Agriculture, archaeology, and energy share the landscape

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Landscape shaped by mining activity

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Lignite (brown coal) mining activity

Industrial Equipment

Authors: Georgakaki Gavriela Kasselouri Eleni

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

1.1 Megalopolis, Greece

Domestic energy resources and potential acquire a strategic importance in Greece today while, at the same time, there is a rising awareness for using renewable resources on a global scale, due to overexploitation of the world’s limited resources. Looking through the lens of the energy potential of the post-mining landscape, what is the next landscape and the future of the urbanization in the basin of Megalopolis?

Starting from the reading of the current productive landscape and its metamorphoses, this thesis investigates Megalopolis territorial transformation under the overlap of different dynamics through time. Energy, soil and water flows are the essential elements of the current landscape formed by small and large scale processes. These are identified as separate but interconnected systems, where the waste of each system is a potential link to another. “The visibility of flows, processes and systems underlies much of the work to be done, especially when displaying vast movements […] of natural resources that are often operating in remote or underground environments at scales too large for the naked eye”. (Bélanger, 2012, p. 291)

In the case of Megalopolis, the radical alternations of the topography, material movements and the natural water flows come together with the slow rhythm of the provincial city and the countryside. After years of lignite exploitation, the artificial topography resulting from the mining activity, generates new territorial figures. The “artificiality of landscape created by mining can be seen as an opportunity to create something new during the treatment process” - a potential for new economies for the post-mining city (Bergbau Folge Landschaft, 2010).

Re-configuring the Productive Territory: Design Explorations for a Post-mining Era

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Towards a post-mining era: A Challenge and a Threat

Megalopolis is a provincial city of approximately 11.000 inhabitants, in the center of Peloponnese, Greece. The area is known as the second Lignite Center of the country and it contributes to the national electricity production with two combustion units currently active. The vast area of 5,000 ha of lignite extraction and combustion facilities are adjacent to the city. The local economy is heavily depending on the mining activity and electricity production. Since the 1970’s, when the extraction started, the Public Power Corporation (PPC) has been a major employer in the area. The internal migration of workers and specialized employees from all over Greece changed the composition of the local population and doubled its size (NTUA, 1992). Simultaneously with the social sphere, the landscape started changing radically as the new production domain started to develop.

The mandatory public and private land expropriations either of agricultural land or forest dramatically transformed the rural landscape, generating a complex system of smaller and bigger open pit lignite mines and artificial hills, forming a manipulated topography. The existing self-sufficient settlements were inscribed in the territory, considering a system recovery process. However, the overexploitation of an extraction area in the center of Megalopolis’ basin is disregarding the recovery of the landscape. The current dominant activity of lignite mining and electricity production is a catalyst of territorial transformations, which at the same time, constitute a disturbance, a rupture in the landscape.

As other former industrial territories in Europe, Megalopolis, without alternative productive economies is going towards a post-mining era,

facing the threat to become a ghost town. Therefore, the emerging scenario of a shrinking economy, through which inhabitants will be forced to migrate inside or outside the borders of the country in order to survive, is evident. After a period of prosperity, decline is coming slowly into the foreground of future Megalopolis.

As lignite is a non-renewable energy resource, the reserves are coming to an end. PPC estimates that the lignite reserves in the area will last for about 20-25 years more. The closure of the mines in Megalopolis is projected around 2040. The postmining, postindustrial landscapes of coal extraction areas are often considered as if they were in a static condition. Landscape is then a by-product, indirect result of the former activity (Berger, 2006). What does the closure mean for the city and the territory? Wouldn’t it be important to start anticipating this transition?

This thesis proposes a series of design strategies to re-configure the productive territory, in a constantly transforming landscape, where new opportunities are emerging for the local populations. Rethinking the productivity of the post-mining landscape introduces an alternative agriculture for the locals, hand in hand with the recovery of the soil and the ecology, and simultaneously creating potential for an energy production scenario based on renewable resources. Under these conditions, biomass is an opportunity for energy production in the local scale and sets new possibilities for the new emerging economies.

An Archipelago of Settlements

Cartography and spatial analysis by the authors based on data from: GEODATA, http://geodata.gov.gr/

28 years old Grown up in Megalopolis, studied in Thessaloniki animal husbandry and dairy production. Fanis came back to continue and expand the family business with new knowledge and technologies in order to increase productivity.

live work work mines

1h 57m 130 km argos korinth kalavrita

live

5’ 31’ father mine worker farming

1h 25m 96,8 km 1h 13m 115 km

milk meat fodder

Cultivate land for fodder (wheat, barley, oat) storage and processing

Currently 500 sheep and 4 goats (future target adding 200 goats) 1000m2 facilities

Fanis farmer grandfather farmer since 1950

0 1 2 km megaloPolis Perivolia

work

2 permanent and 3 seasonal workers

live

N

Distribution in the local market anD arounD PeloPonnese (future target is distribution to Athens, but not in supermarkets)

feta cheese yogurt rice pudding cream

100 ha of agricultural land 100 tones milk per year

Wholesale (except from feta, which is not profitable: 1kg feta needs 4lt milk giving a profit of 5%)

the family business exPanDs in all ProDuction stePs

I II III

Processing and packaging: dairy production from 20 tons of milk (future target 100 tones)

Fanis Kalogeropoulos,

Public Life

The population of the municipality of Megalopolis and of settlements around changed radically in the transition period towards the industrial era. The decline in population of the surrounding villages does not directly link to the increase of Megalopolis’ population, as people from other areas in Greece, specialized labor force, had been arriving to work in the mines. However, it’s due to the low productivity of the highland, the bad connectivity of the infrastructural network on a strong geomorphological terrain and the concentration of amenities in Megalopolis because of the start of the mining operation.

(NTUA, 1992)

The combination of different working and living places is extending the grid of the city, broadening its boundaries, as additional activities take place in the countryside. It’s an appropriation where people live in the city and work, move towards or through the landscape, which is making it part of their lives.

family structure > urban structure

kids

parents

single family house with back yard expanding as the family grows

11.014 inhabitants

Municipality of Megalopolis 7.877 Megalopolis 812 gortyna 2.325 falaisia

60, 45% active PoPulation

Primary occuPation

tertiary sector

seconDary activities

honey production gardening livestock on the edge hunting in the forest

seconDary sector

0-14 y 15-64 y

Primary sector

A Multi-layered Landscape

“ Space depends on scale and experience, exists as well as in the transition between the interior and the exterior, is inhabited by users; it does not exist without temporality.” (Verbakel, 2007)

The inhabitation of the territory over time projects its multi-functionality, the variety of activities that are coming together in the same space and form its identity. The appropriation of the different landscapes reveals the natural, archaeological and cultural territorial heritage which is not only a composition of spatial elements but also the constant use of the territory.

Legend

Industrial Zone

Urban Tissue

Mining area

Forest (mixed, coniferous, broadleaf)

Sclerophyllous vegetation

Transitional forest and scrub areas

Natural pastures

Mainly agriculture with extent areas of natural plantation

Complex agricultural systems

Olive grove

Sand dune

Non irrigated arable land

Railway Road network

The complexity of this coexistence is intersecting the mining area, which is sometimes enhancing and other times disrupting the continuities. Thus, there are fragmented and connected parts as well, such as the grasslands of the reclaimed deposits and the artificial lakes that serve livestock. The perception of being inside a basin is also defined by specific landmarks. The cooling towers, as contemporary landmarks, stand inside, in the center of the basin forming two orientation elements, while the surrounding mountains are defining the outer-upper border of the basin, forming at the same time a geological landmark. In this timeless landscape, “the inhabitants of the land tirelessly erase and rewrite the ancient scrawls of the soil”. The exploitation of the land is a process of landscape colonization even of remote areas with machinery and land becomes an object of construction, a type of artifact, a product. (Corboz, 1983)

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

national road railway natural gas pipeline conveyor belts primary roads dirt roads contour lines

corrals

chapels , churches

ancient ruins

pasture land

lakes

agriculture land

forest

initial open pit excavation starts after 1978 still open

Thoknia initial open pit excavation starts after 1969 until 2011

Marathousa initial open pit excavation starts after 1988 until 2016

Choremi initial open pit excavation starts 1971-1975 still active

Kyparissia external deposit starts 1977 until 1995

Thoknia external deposit for infertile soil starts 1972 until 1986 for fly ash starts after 1970

Choremi first external deposit starts 1974 until 1988

Choremi west external deposit starts 1977 until 1997

Choremi east external deposit starts 1984 until 2000

CHOREMI

THOKNIA

MARATHOUSA

“Also there is the possibility of using motion in an object as part of the design and composition. The sculpture then becomes in one sense a machine, and as such it will be necessary to design it as a machine, so that the moving parts shall have a reasonable ruggedness. Even those sculptures designed to be propelled by the wind are still machines, and should be considered thus, as well as aesthetically.”

(“A Propos of Measuring a Mobile” by Alexander Calder (manuscript, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1943).)

The current topography: interpreted in shades of grey, from the darkest the deepest to the lightest the highest point, the current manipulated topography of hills and holes in the ground is expressed in this map. The conveyor belts that transfer the material and the dirt roads inside the mines are the essential infrastructure for their function and contributors to the formation of this landscape. The map is a projection of an instant topography, of its formation during the first semester of 2016

Cartography and spatial analysis by the authors. Topography base map from: PPC Lignite Center of Megalopolis, provided by the Survey Engineering Department, PPC, 2016

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Starting from the mass material movements and the large amount of fresh water, extraction of the lignite and electricity production, the mining activity could be seen as a closed industrial system, where energy, soil and water have been overexploited. In all the steps and phases of these processes, there is waste produced that could be seen as a dynamic for a new system. How could the waste of each system generated by the industrial activity, be a potential for the territory?

A reading of the current networks could lead to design strategies for the creation of more resilient systems, where more demands could be met, without overexploiting the non-renewable resources of the landscape.

Through a frame of until and after closure phases, the proposed design strategies explore the dynamics of recycle and reuse the existing waste of the systems of energy, soil and water.

wells pumping stations

national road surface channel (urban waste water) energy flow water supply for domestic use fresh water supply for industrial use

conveyor belts natural gas (underground pipes) primary roads

fly ash deposit

excavation area

internal deposit

recycle the evaporated “harvesting the

IOMASS biomass

B biomass

as raw material

B IOMASS - E LECTRICITY S UPPLY top soil

- E

NERGY

enlarge the riverbed - slow down the flow of water & collect the lignite sediments mixed

flow of materials aquifer internal deposit y ash deposit flow of water flow of energy fuels/energy H ONEY P RODUCTION cultivation of leguminous crops (roots enabling storage of nitrogen-rich material) E NRICH T HE O RGANIC M ATTER I NCREASE B IODIVERSITY R EFORESTATION collect biomass (forest maintenancefire protection zones)

CROPS S EPARATE T HE T OP S OIL

herbs & cosmetics & medicines

low vegetation to keep the soil fertile

D AIRY P RODUCTS shrubs manurefertilizer plaster boards

corals - livestock (water for the animals)

electricity supply for households R EUSE

B IOSWALE collect storm

C OLLECTION O F S TORM W ATER bioswalepurification district heating CCU: CAPTURE AND REUSE FUELS / ENERGY

O F F LY A SH cement industry fertilizer solar panels - agriculture generate energy for machineries collective unit abandoned train station turns to P UBLIC S PACE CO2 SO2 NO x industrial process new economies local farmers

water

B IOTOPE

Faculty of Agriculture

EUSE OF I NDUSTRIAL B UILDINGS Museum, Research Center, Production Hub

B IOMASS - E NERGY CROPS D AIRY P RODUCTS collective unit

retention ponds irrigation

corals - livestock (water for the animals)

solar panels - agriculture generate energy for machineries

separation of grey & black water

C OLLECTION O F S TORM W ATER bioswalepurification district heating

B IOSWALE collect storm water existing olive groves (olive oil production)

REUSE OF THE RAILWAY (local connections & seasonal trips for travellers)

R

Capturing a landscape in motion

The design in this scale focuses on sculpting a “tableau vivant”, capturing the future alternations of an operative landscape, an inhabitable productive territory. Following the dynamic processes of topographic reconfigurations until the closure of the mines, the phasing is directing the creation of a new ground. Part by part, the re-composition of the landscape is taking place in a fine grain of movements and strategies applied in different places and in different times. The moving future landscape is projected phases, in a series of diagrams, which anticipate the transition towards a postmining era. “Landscape, as seen through the practice of reclamation, is grounded in both the mechanical and the organic models of nature, both of which are derived from these modernist conceptions and views of nature. Reclaimed natures may be technologically constructed and evolve organically (and vice versa). Nature is a curious union of the machine and the organism in reclamation.” (Berger, 2002, p.182)

The design aims to articulate all the different elements, sharp and soft geometries of the topography which are complementary or in juxtaposition. Establishing a dynamic composition in balance, the current infrastructure is used to form the future landscape. The same machinery that shape the current topography in particular slopes and plateaus are used to organize the proposal. Strong geometries and unfolding soft patterns compose the future machine-made landscape. Material movements are still re-configuring the territory, as the exchange among the different areas is going on.

“

For a landscape to be properly recovered it must be remade, designed, invented anew; it cannot simply be restored, as an old painting.” (Corner and Balfour, 1999)

INCREASE BIODIVERSITY:

Introduce a variety of species in the reforested areas

UTILIZE:

Utilize water from existing ponds for irrigation and livestock

COLLECT: EXPAND: STORE WATER:

Water storage to provide water for the cooling towers to release the pressure from the aquifer

Expanding pedestrian-cyclic paths connect to the ancient theater and agora

Storm water collection system; a network of bioswales on the grid of Megalopolis

REACTIVATE:

Reactivate the public space on Psathi deposit: a balcony to the city

PLANT:

Tree crops – eucalyptus planted for biomass

1 0 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 km extraction area

REUSE:

Reuse the abandoned train station and the railroad to connect the nearby villages

INTRODUCE:

Introduce energy crops on the finished deposits of infertile soil

0m

0m

200m 25m50m

100m

100m

200m 25m50m

Part 1: Investigations for The Post-Mining Territory

silvoPastoral system mixeD Plantation of trees anD shrubs (increase bioDiversity & welfare of the animals)

retention PonD rocks anD gravel useD to retain the storm water During the wet season

sPring 2035 | trimming the olive trees

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

64 Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Part 1: Investigations for The Post-Mining Territory

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

The Crater

The Coast

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

A History of the Future of Megalopolis

Megalopolis, Greece

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2028 - Lunar Landscape of the Mines

2030 - New Layers of Soil, New Layers of Energy

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2035 - Non Land Exhaustive Energy Crops

2038 - Recreational Park

“ You must close your eyes... otherwise you won’t see anything!”

- Alice in Wonderland

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2040 - Open Air Museum of Archeology and Mining,

2040 - Reclaiming the Old Train Station

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2045 - Landscape between the City and the Mines

2050 - Co-existence in a Healing Landscape

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2060 - Rice Fields are Back

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2080 - The Landscape Returns to Nature

2090 - Terrirorial Park in the Basin

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Location: Charleroi, Belgium 50.4108° N, 4.4446° E

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Terrils are a prominent landscape feature of Charleroi

Nature has begun to take over abandonned industries

View from the top of a terril

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Urban setting

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Industrial Valley

Industry meets residence

Authors: Sven Mertens

Michaël Stas Benjamin Vanbrabant

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

1.2 Charleroi, Belgium

Exploring Le Pays Noir: Design Investigations for a Productive Landscape

During the last century, the Charleroi region endured drastic changes. Due to large-scale infrastructural interventions, the territory was transformed into a wild conglomeration of steel and glass industries, shoulder to shoulder with mineshafts, worker’s neighbourhoods and slag heaps. These industrial elements, some of which are still present today, have strongly reshaped the region and its landscape. With the decline of the coal-based industries, Charleroi entered a period of deep economical, cultural and territorial transformations. But before it could recover from this recession, the region was already feeling ¬¬the impact of the next one.

‘Le Pays Noir’, as the once prosperous coal region was called, is now associated with negative connotations like waste, entropy and unproductiveness. Although several attempts of economic revitalisation have been undertaken in the last decades, Charleroi didn’t manage to move beyond its state of regression. To shift the current perceptions of waste(d) and (un)productiveness, this thesis proposes a mapping and design investigation of the Pays Noir as a critical assessment. The interpretation of the territory starts from a critical reading of the materials it is built with and the difficulties it has encountered. Now, fifty years after the industrial decline, pioneering vegetation is reclaiming industrial relicts and abandoned sites, composing a new landscape figure, which has emerged from the shadows of the past. This thesis wants to move beyond the existing paradigms of urban ‘renewal’ and ‘sustainability’, and alternatively wants to introduce the concept of re-cycling to the territorial dynamics.

By looking at Charleroi’s territory from a different perspective, this study aims firstly to unfold its territorial complexity, which has been neglected for far too long. Secondly, it examines the predispositions and the hidden qualities that are present in the ‘Pays Noir’. In conclusion, it proposes a vision and strategies for a productive landscape, creating a framework that can structure the Charleroi region.

Palimpsest

In a famous text, André Corboz (1983) affirmed that a territory is like a palimpsest, composed by several traces resulting from an accumulation of different wave of urbanisations. This holds true for the landscape of the Pays Noir which changed drastically over time. The combination of the Sambre valley and the coal layer caused a series of transformations with the purpose of moulding this area into the perfect industrial machine. New centres of productivity demanded new kinds of infrastructure as well as housing for the workers which helped shape the look of the Black Country. Those processes left distinctive traces, still readable in the landscape (Corboz, 1983). In order to understand the former transformations and the ongoing ones, this section briefly reconstructs the most important changes, revealing the traces that are still visible in the Charleroi territory, with a particular attention to the spaces of production and their relation with the urban tissue, the infrastructure and the landscape.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

1777 - PRE-INDUSTRIAL ERA 1873 - INDUSTRIAL ERA 1969 - END INDUSTRIAL ERA 2015 - CURRENT SITUATION

Systems

In contemporary urban design practices, the concept of the mixed-city is widely accepted. But how mixed is a city nowadays still? We include programs such as bars, offices and services but we generally exclude one, namely the productive economy. If the urban generation of the Charleroi region would be done the same way, there would be enormous spatial and social mismatches between living and working conditions. Therefore we start from a reading of the current and historically existing systems such as energy, waste, water and mobility, and we envision a new form of productivity for the region. For us, the carrier of the new productive economy is the incredible transitional landscape of the Pays Noir. Nature has slowly , but uncontrolled, taken over the industrial terrains and parcels of this shrinking territory. We see a potential for this landscape to be the new identity of the region, turning the Pays Noir into a Pays Vert. At the same time this landscape has the strength to operate as a connective surface, structuring the whole territory.

drawn by author, (1,2) based on: Huang, C. (2014). Urban Regeneration: Foresting Vacancy In > Philadelphia (Undergraduate). University of Pennsylvania School of Design.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Systemic Section

We propose a series of small scale interventions which will have an impact on the whole region. By recycling and scaling up or down certain systems, a new kind of productive economy can emerge which will transform the Charleroi territory.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

5 Landscapes - 4 Frames

We see the Pays Noir as the collection of five distinct landscapes, from north to south; an agricultural plateau, the big box highway, the slope city, the Sambre valley and forested hills. Since each landscape has their own specificities and qualities, our connective surface adapts and transforms according to these different circumstances.

To test our design, we have chosen four frames that include these five landscapes.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

1: Investigations for The Post-Mining Territory

Field

In the north of the region, agriculture is the main production activity. Today, artificial fertilizers are used extensively to support the food economy. These artificial products increase the amount of nitrate in the soil and consequently they pollute the nearby creeks. In addition to this problem, there is also increasing erosion due to water flows in the area.

While farmers keep on expanding and intensifying their production, urbanization is also claiming more and more space in rural areas. Small villages are growing beyond their borders, resulting in an uncontrolled spread of ribbon development and allotment patches. Extensive use of the car as the main transport system demands infrastructural interventions that support this type of mobility by continuously providing more space for the car. To prevent traffic congestions inside the village, bypass roads are built to circumpass the centre while the former infrastructures are kept in existence. The increased amount of impermeable surface also increases the probability of flood problems in these areas.

Apart from these problems, the rural territory offers also a lot of potential. A new system of wood sides, hedgerows and tree lines, could enforce the existing agricultural fields by protecting them from water and wind erosion. In addition they increase biodiversity in fauna and flora and they can become an integral part of an energy landscape where they serve as a biomass resource. New biogas digesters can be introduced in combination with fertilizer processing companies. The produced gas can be used in the nearby villages as fuel for coupled heat and power plants that supplies heat and electricity to new housing typologies. The new public transport system can serve as infrastructure for the transmission of these new energies. Both new energy systems and public transport demand different typologies of individual housing, yet in a collective, that is introduced as a second order to the primary ribbons. To introduce these new elements and systems, new collaborations will have to be set up between different actors.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

^ soil erosion

^ floodable areas. 25 year recurrence (dark) to extreme

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

^ existing mobility situation. bus lines in intensity (darker = more lines passing)

^ proposed mobility vision. Rapid Transit System with

^ residential areas (grey), expansion areas (red)

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

1: Investigations for The Post-Mining Territory

hedgerows popular fast popular long

short rotation trees nursing trees oak trees Roman Road Wood sides 5 year rotation

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Hedgerows 2 year rotation

Confluence

After the decline of the coal-based industries, Charleroi entered a period of deep economical, cultural and territorial transformations. Many former industrial sites that once proudly represented the prosperous Pays Noir were abandoned. A landscape of dispersed industrial relicts, buildings in decay and heavily polluted sites were left behind. Over time some sites were erased and replaced by something else, polluted soils removed to who knows where, while others remained without attention. The Sambre valley played an important role in this history, yet it constitutes today to the collective image of Charleroi as an unproductive city in decay. However with the passing of time, these sites were taken over by pioneering vegetation and make us question the image of the ‘Pays Noir’ that seems to have gradually transformed into a ‘Pays Vert’. Seen from another perspective these abandoned sites are maybe not as ‘wasted’ as they appear to be. Ecologically they are enormously interesting and their natural dynamics are an inspiration for how to deal with them.

^ wasted and wasteful spaces constituting a grey and surreal landscape

^ floodable areas. 25 year recurrence (dark) to extreme situation

^ parcels - large industrial platforms in the valley and smaller plots on the slopes

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

As Charleroi knows a rather slow projected demographic growth for the coming decades, this region has the time to use techniques like phytoremediation to clean its soils. These enforce the new idea of a ‘productive Landscape’ and are a lot cheaper than soil removal techniques that often just move the problem.

On a larger scale these black and brownfields that are turning green, could become part of a cyclic system that can accept green-field development, combined with measures that enforce the on-going natural dynamics.

^ existing mobility situation. bus lines in intensity (darker = more lines passing)

^ proposed mobility vision. Rapid Transit System with feeders

^ residential areas (grey), industrial areas (blue) expansion areas (red)

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Production Landscape

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Productive Landscape

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

A History of the Future of Charleroi

Charleroi, Belgium

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2018 - To the Productive Terril Parks

2022 - After Nuclear: New Energy Production

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2025 - New Bikepath: Re-activating the Railyards

2030 - The Ring Road Park

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2025 - Orientating toward the Terril

2030 - Along the Sambre River

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2040 - Unused Metro Station has a New Life: Charleroi Triathlon

2050 - Terril Ecology and Sky Mobility

128 Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2060 - Lonely Fisherman in a Replenished Ecosystem

2070 - Jumping Platform: From Quarry to Lake

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2.0

Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp - Antwerp, Belgium

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Location: Antwerp, Belgium

51.2194° N, 4.4025° E

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2.1 Antwerp, Belgium

The 20th Century Belt

The 20th century saw the urban expansion of Antwerp into an outer city belt engulfing its historical center. Its post-World War war I development plan, mostly implemented, had been aimed at progress and economic development. However, this image of progress did not come without consequences. Oversized infrastructure is combined with low density, single-use residential neighborhoods that lack vitality, and an outdated built-form confines current ways of urban life into dictated and inflexible living, public space, and mobility patterns. Moreover, a strong barrier lays between the 19th and the 20th century belts: the international highway that simultaneously serves as The Ring (road).

These three major problems: infrastructure, density proportion and monofunctionality (lack of vitality and isolation) can evidently be tackled, while reorienting the major development wave of the city in the 20th century belt – which in fact, is the only one with substantial densification capacity.

As Antwerp will face a population increase of about 100,000 people by 2030, this will require 47,000 additional households. While the city center is already saturated, the 20th Century Belt has the capacity to accommodate the increased density.

However, to accommodate for this density other urban systems and infrasructures both, hard and soft, will be needed to support this growing population, in a way that makes the city pleasant and livable, while reflecting values of contemporary 21st century living.

The 21st century defies the ways of life that have been dictated. We work differently, we live differently, we move differently, and we think differently than any last century planner could have ever fathomed. Our cities need to respond to contemporary issues, current patterns, and blurred distinctions.

Low-rise housing typologies

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Asphalt street parking is prevalent

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Wide streets and intersections

Inactive street walls

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Rivierenhof Park

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Social housing

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Antwerp Systems Analysis

From Linear to Cyclic

In order to approach the Twentieth Century Belt from a new light that is future-oriented, it is essential to approach it from an ecological point of view. To do so, understanding its systemic logics is a crucial step to begin to create linkages between urban and infrastructural cycles. As a group the studio studied, and analyzed systems such as energy, mobility, water, food, waste, public space, and real estate. While this list is not holistic, it covers many of the issues that affect the city of today and that will be important to address for the future.

Some of the performed analysis is represented next.

Source: Suyk, K. (2015). De kerncentrale en molen van Doel [Online image]. Retrieved June 4, 2016 from http://www.nrc.nl/ nieuws/2015/12/25/belgische-kerncentrale-doel-2-weer-in-gebruik

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Energy

The majority of resources, that Belgium relies on for energy production, is imported. Petroleum and Natural gas, are 100% imported from East Europe and Middle East, Netherlands and Norway. Uranium used for nuclear energy and is 100% imported from Asia and America.

For the city of Antwerp, the energy shortage has bigger and more direct impact. The Port of Antwerp is one of the biggest international ports, and it is the biggest energy hub in Belgium. One of the two nuclear power plants that supply 50% of Belgium’s energy is located in Antwerp, as well as several natural gas stations, off-shore wind farms and plenty of petrochemical plants that deal with 40 million tonnes of crude oil per year, (one of the biggest crude oil import port in Europe).

According to the statistics on Total Energy Consumption in 2010, 49% is from petroleum and 27% is from natural gas (fossil fuels have occupied almost 80%). Electricity Generation in 2010 shows that 50% of electricity produced is from nuclear sources and 40% is from fossil fuels.

There has been some concern about both nuclear energy and fossil fuels. For the nuclear power plants, according to the Belgian Law, by 2015, it had already reached its 40 years’ limit. Although Electrabel got a 10-year extension, the increasing protests against nuclear energy and security concern lead to uncertainty of its future. By 2025, there is a high probability that the nuclear energy plants will have shut down. This means half of the total electricity generation needs to be replaced by other resources. As for fossil fuels, the “Low Carbon Economy in Europe”, as well as the “2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference”, has put targets on reducing greenhouse gas emission. This means that a reduction in the use of fossil fuels such as petroleum and natural gas is expected. Together it means that we need to find alternatives to replace 94% of the total energy.

Source: https://www.entsoe.eu

ENERGY

146

Source: http://www.iea.org/ http://economie.fgov.be/en/

100% Import

- East Europe 36.5% - Middle East 24.9% - Norway 16.7% - West Europe 11.2% - Africa - America

Source: http://www.iea.org/ http://economie.fgov.be/en/

- Netherland 35% - Norway 35% - Middle East 17.1% - UK 4.2% - Russia - Germany

16%

Consumption per sector Household Industry Transport Non-energy use

100% Import 19% Import* 3%

Electricity production Car production Industry Service Agriculture Household Non-energy consumption 34% 26%

- France 51% - Neiherland 44% - Luxumbourg 5%

Industry Transport Household Service Agriculture Petroleum refinery Power Station 24%

Industry Transport Household Service Agriculture Non-energy consumption 16% 2%3% Final Consumption in 2010 Oil Natural Gas Coal Electricity Heat Renewable

Potential Strategies for Renewable Energy Production

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Heat and energy capacities and the extra amount needed to support the 2030 population

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Source: Semo . (2012). VLAANDEREN & MOBILITEIT? [Online image]. Retrieved June 12, 2016 from http://semo-antwerpen. blogspot.be/2012/10/waarom-halen-vrachtwagens-in.html

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Mobility

Antwerp is a major hub for passage - not just of people, but also of goods. Because the status of the Port of Antwerp as a major international trade hub for import and export, its mobility systems - vehicular, rail, and maritime - are heavily used.

The Ring is one of the most congested highways in Europe, and is the center of attention for different citizen groups such as ‘Ringland’. Before the ring was built in the 1960s, you could not yet speak of a ‘belt’.

The 20th Century Belt’s Public transport is mostly oriented towards the city center. As a result, moving from one municipality to another within the belt is quite inconvenient without a car. While there is a bus and tram network, certain parts do not have stops within walkable distance, rendering the car the easiest solution. The train system has a similar situation: its goal is to connect people with the rest of Flanders, so once again, the train connectivity within the belt is easiest by car.

As for informal car sharing practices, such as Blabla Car, a carpool service accessed through a phone application, they exist today but have not reached the gross of the population yet. However, future projects can could to these kinds of practices and make the population more aware of their advantages.

Municipalities in the belt are separated by infrastructural and landscape cuts. This makes movement through the belt even more difficult. The limited roads that actually bridge the cuts are also quite congested during peak hours.

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A ntwerp 4,6% to the poRt 24,4 % fRom oUt of antweRp to the poRt 53,2 % tR ansit 22,4% fRom oUt of antweRp to the centeR

674 2821 1231 8427 1631 6603 1099 7038 1524 7523

! ! ! ! !

IN FR AST RUC TUR

Infrastructure for Mobility: Highway, rail, tram, bus, and maritime navigation

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY IN

ASTH MA LUN G C ANCE R

Pollution effects as a result of mobility

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Oriented toward the City Center Municipalities separated by buffer or infrastructure

Rail cuts through the 20th c. belt, but skips connecting it

Many bus lines and trams, but not convenient for travel within the 20th C. belt

Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Een bewoner schept water weg tijdens een overstroming in 2012.. [Online image]. (2015). Retrieved June 6, 2016 from http:// www.hln.be/regio/nieuws-uit-mortsel/gemeenten-hebben-plan-om-minervawijk-droog-te-houden-a2364783/

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Water

Antwerp has a very interesting relationship with water. Situated along the Scheldt River, Antwerp developed as a port city, facilitating trade and commerce in Europe and internationally. Its urban development is interconnected with its port’s growth and expansion over time. What began as a small settlement in the bend of the Scheldt, developed concentrically during the Middle Ages and defence canals were constructed that functioned as streets.

When Antwerp fell to the Dutch in the 16th century, shipping traffic into and out of Antwerp was blocked till the late 18th century. In the 19th century the French emporer turned it into a military base and port traffic resumed, increasing in activity. A new dock area and new quays were constructed to accomodate the increasing activity. Over time the canal that functioned for city navigation fell into decay and was used as an open sewer system causing disease. As a result the waterways disappeared as the system was filled and covered.

The level of water is actually higher than the street level in many parts of Antwerp, and so water has to continually be pumped out. In theory, if the pumps were to stop, those areas would flood.

The city is indeed prone to flooding, but while flood control has been installed along the Scheldt, the floods that threaten Antwerp are flash floods, due to an inefficient water management system (combined sewers) and massive impermeable surfaces. Those factors in addition to heavy rains as a result of climate change, have caused serious floods in many neighborhoods in recent years. Several of these flood areas also fall within the 20th Century Belt.

Water Relationship to Antwerp and Flood Prone Areas

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Water Operations

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Harbor Expansion: ‘Fill’ Processes

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Major Flood Areas

Part 2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

MARTA: ANTWERPEN HERONTDEKT DE BOERENMARKT OP 13/6. [Online image]. (2015). Retrieved June 12, 2016 from http://www.life-magazine.be/nl/ontdekken/2172-marta-antwerpen-herontdekt-de-boerenmarkt-op-1306.html

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Food

An apple imported from New Zealand requires 27% more energy consumption during the whole food supply chain than the apple cultivated locally in western Europe (Blanke, 2005). We consume extra energy and natural resources when we purchase food that is out of season.

The Belgian agriculture sector has a good performance in the current global food supply chain, as massive amount of food flows into and out Belgium annually (FAO STAT, 2015). However, this food production chain is established on huge energy consumption footprints and a massive output of greenhouse gas emissions. The latest Flemish Agriculture Department’s report (2014) demonstrates nearly 80% of fresh food consumption in Belgium is through channels of supermarkets chains. In the other twenty percent, 9 percent is shared by local stores while only 2.5 percent is sold in the open markets. Through interviews with supermarket representatives, grocery store owners and market food retailers, we capture three different ways of food flows in the twentieth century belt.

The supermarket groups mostly have their own logistic centers in other provinces from which, cargo trucks will distribute the goods. The local grocery stores get their fresh products from two wholesale market located in Hoboken and Mersken by small vans. The local market retailers have their own channels of fresh food from local farmers in other provinces. They come to Antwerp once a week but for different daily markets.

When demographic data is overlaid with food distribution in Antwerp some interesting findings appear: Restaurants are mianly distributed in middleincome districts. Markets are distributed in less populated density areas. Supermarkets are not distributed in the densest areas, and are more accessible to young people. Middle class neighboorhoods have more accessibility to food options. Supermarkets, markets and restaurants are concentrated in the city center and fragmented outside the ring.

Food Import by Type

Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

5064-10129 10129-15193 15193-20257 20257-25322 25322-30286

Food-selling

Restaurants are mianly Supermarkets are not it is more accessible for

Restaurants are Supermarkets are it is more accessible

Restaurants are mianly distributed Supermarkets are not distributed it is more accessible for

Restaurants are mianly distributed Supermarkets are not distributed in it is more accessible for young people.

Middle class have more Markets are distributed In general, supermarkets, and fragmented outside

Middle class have Markets are distributed In general, supermarkets, and fragmented

Middle class have more Markets are distributed in In general, supermarkets, and fragmented outside

Middle class have more accessibilities Markets are distributed in less population In general, supermarkets, markets and fragmented outside the ring.

Healthy food restaurants are concentrated in the city center and

distribution Healthy food restaurants are concentrated in the city center and fast-food

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Cyclic Transformative Systems & Applications

Antwerp, Belgium

Authors: Swagata Das Adam Prana Nghia Tran Dai

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2.1.1

the 20th Century Belt: Valorizing the Blue & Green Network as Qualitative Infrastructure

Re-connecting

This proposal takes the approach that Antwerp has to tackle two challenges: to solve the flood problem induced by inefficient water management and climate change, as well as to accommodate for an additional 100,000 inhabitants by 2030.

To tackle both these issues at the same time, this proposal tackles the flood problem in Antwerp as a strategy to create a qualitative blue-green infrastructure to support the densification.

The current water management system, a combined sewer system that mixes black water, gray water and storm water, is inefficient and gets overloaded during heavy rains. In addition large, paved and impermeable surfaces speed up the flow of run-off water, further adding pressure on an already overloaded system. Because of the overload, water has no place to go, and starts to flood neighborhoods.

The aim of this proposal is to make the 20th century belt of Antwerp resilient to flood by radical transformation of the way that the water flows. The impact of this transformation can have a social dimension, as it could be used as a mechanism to create better quality public spaces. Increasing interaction with water, coupled with opportunities to engage in

outdoor activity along the water, could become a (qualitative) framework for future densification. We call this a blue-green infrastructural system.

The proposed system utilizes a series of strategies that work together in a cycle to mitigate flood and to enhance livability in the 20th century belt. Below is a summary:

Polder and creeks are used to support catchment areas to mitigate flooding by storing and purifying water, thus adding value to it. By reviving or uncovering waterways that have been buried, and by designing ways for public interaction with it, a new connection is created between people and water. Sustainable urban drainage systems, like permeable surfaces, water retention basins, green roofs, bio-swales and rain gardens are positioned within the bluegreen infrastructural network to increase the robustness of the system.

Separation of waste water from gray water also occurs at the household level and in a ripple effect, increases the city’s resilience toward flooding. Grey water at each household level is linked to common space to reduce load on the centralized water treatment system, and also for reuse in neighbourhood activities like gardening, car washing etc. Emphasis is on the actions of individuals to reduce the threat of flooding at each neighbourhood level.

Water-related

Hazards Floods and Climate Change

Flooding is one of the most critical issues that need to be dealt with in Antwerp. A study on the sustainable management of urban pluvial flash floods (Willems 2015) indicates that the more extreme rainfall intensities are caused by climate change, and lead to many recent pluvial floods in Antwerp. Floodsite Project (2008) described that pluvial floods do not occur because the river is overloaded, but rather, when rain water can escape the water system. The inefficient wastewater management system (combined sewer system) contributes to flood disasters. Combined sewer system that mixes grey water, black water and rain water is perceived as one of the major factors that contribute to such failure. Another waste water management issue is the disequilibrium in the hydrological system, which 364,500 Antwerp inhabitants have to depend on only two water cleaning systems, Antwerpen Zuid and Deurne (Maercke and Rosso, 2015).

Recent Floods in Antwerp

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Characteristics of the Territory

Water has always been an important feature in Antwerp’s history. Antwerp is situated on the banks of the Scheldt River about 88km from the North Sea. Historically, the city was mainly located on the right bank of the Scheldt River in an alluvial plain. As the city grew, it started expanding to the left side of the river. The port of Antwerp has, throughout time, occupied a major role as a hub for trade and commerce. In addition, navigable water ways use to serve as streets. As the city grew, and industrialization occured, those were eventually covered over due to their mis-management and their harboring of disease.

In 1983, the surrounding municipalities also became the part of Antwerp. Modern Antwerp today has about 200 km2 of surface area and only a part of the whole region has been fully developed (Antwerp, 2016).

Topography and Soil

The topography of Antwerp is flat and fibrous with rivers. The Scheldt River, with the Rhine River and Meuse River, forms the largest estuary in Western Europe (new world encyclopedia, 2016). The green lines in the ‘Topography’ map on the next page indicate the lowest areas and the brown lines indicate the highest.

The soil in Antwerp tends to be sandy and acidic. Soils in Flanders are mostly derived from new sedimentary parent materials deposited during the Pleistocene or Holocene periods (Rompaey, 1998). The dark gray color in ‘Soil’ map on the next page shows the area that has a soil capacity to absorb the water. We can see that almost all areas in the 20th-century belt have soil sensitive infiltrate size.

Landscape Reading

CREEK

Flood in relation with creek networks (which are mostly covered) in Greater Antwerp

Source: (Geopunt Vlaanderen, 2016)

COMBINED SEWAGE

Flood in relation to different water pipe systems in greater Antwerp

Source: (Geopunt Vlaanderen, 2016)

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

TOPOGRAPHY

Contour map and water assessment erosion prone areas map

Source: (Geopunt Vlaanderen, 2016)

SOIL

Water infiltration sensitive soils

Source: (Geopunt Vlaanderen, 2016)

A buried creek could found on Merksemheide (Schoten) neighborhood where the Eethuisbeek creek was filled and occupied by industrial buildings along Albert Canal. Increased impermeable surface areas that cover the historic navigable waterways, contribute to the flooding events occurring in the 20th-century belt of Antwerp.

The inefficient wastewater management system also contributes to flood disaster. Nowadays rain water falling on the roofs and roads is mainly collected in pipes and led into the sewage system. This implies that it can occasionally produce overflows from the sewage into natural streams (Maercke and Rosso, 2015). Combined sewage pipes that mix grey,black and rain water is perceived as one of the major factors that contribute to such failure. To overcome the flood problem the Antwerp, municipalities had started to build storm water lines across the city. The costly expense required for building such infrastructure makes the development slow. The sewage picture on the previous page shows the existing sewage pipe variety based on the type of water it accommodates; green lines indicate the rainwater sewage pipe, combined sewage pipes in grey and drain dry weather pipes in brown.

Creek Mismanagement Buildings along Albert Canal, and a buried creek in Merksemheide neighborhood

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2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt

Buried Creek Network around the Albert Canal Neighborhoods where the worst floods occur

Strategies

5 main strategies are used as part of the system and are presented as follows.

Strategy 1: SEPARATION OF COMBINED SEWAGE SYSTEM

Strategy 2: PERMEABLE PARKING SURFACES

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Systemic Section

A series of interlinked productive solutions

Section showing multiple strategies of flood mitigation at multiple scales.

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2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

FLOOD AREAS

Flood area in Antwerp and the surrounding municipalities.

CREEKS

Blue lines indicate the selected creeks that would be revived to construct the green blue system.

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GREEN OPEN SPACES

Dark green indicates open spaces where the infiltration and retention basins will be situated in.

SEWAGE

Red networks indicate where the separation of combined water system would be implemented.

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

A Revived Water System

A Blue system that runs through the 20th century belt will serve as a basis for a Green system.

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A Green Public Space System

The proposed blue system acts as a framework along which to install a green public space system composed of a bike route with bike share spots, walking trails and platforms.

Bike route

Plateaus

Platform

Walking trails Fragmented greens

Bike sharing

Creek

Stormwater lines

Water retention basin

Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

The Blue-Green System

Dealing with water system and mitigatng floods will be a key consideration for an urban area to absorb the growing population. In dealing with the water and flood issues, an opportunity to create quality public space inter-linked with flood mitigation strategies comes to light. Valorizing a blue-green network could serve as a qualitative public infrastructure to support future densification of the 20th century belt.

Several neighborhoods where the flooding occurs would benefit from storm water networks that combine with the infiltration basin at the selected low level green open spaces. Revived creeks tissue would connect such neighborhoods and as the result, the natural watershed function would reproduce. The radical transformation of the waterways also has an impact for the social demographic by the improvement of public spaces qualities. The green system which contains the bike route, walking trail, platform and plateaus would develop on the top of the improved water system.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Green System Bike route Walking trails Fragmented greens Bike sharing

Plateaus Platform

Water System Creek Stormwater lines Water retention basin

The Blue-Green Infrastructural System

System

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Implementation: Blue-Green Infrastructural Network arounf the Albert Canal

Test Site at the Neighborhood Scale

Public Space as a structure for Future Denification

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

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Part 2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Uncovering a historic waterway

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2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Productive and Active Public Space

Phasing

As a system that is synthetic and could grow over time, the phasing presented shows how the bluegreen system could be incrementally implemented. A blue strategy, then a green strategy, which together create a resilient location that is both productive and qualitative. This becomes a structural amenity in a neighborhood that could potentially absorb new inhabitants.

FLOODING

Authors: Wenbo Fu Charlotte Timmers

Maria Zouroudi

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2.1.2

Synergies of Waste-Energy-Mobility:

Toward a More Resilient 20th Century Belt of Antwerp

This project considers energy waste and mobility, as the three main systems that will frame future urbanization in the 20th century belt of Antwerp. Rather than regarding them as separate entities we explore possible synergies and exchanges between them, using the theory of ‘systemic design’ 1 as a background, and the systemic section as a tool. This approach helps us envision a new, more integrated urban environment, based on the interaction of different networks that gradually transform and activate space in the city, neighborhood and block scales. Since this transition suggests a change in mindset, the transformation of the belt is a long process that will not happen overnight.

Some of the main principles behind our strategies are minimization of the use of private car, multimodality in the transportation of people and goods, resource exchange between different actors, proximity between living and working places, as well as activation of the neighborhood through the creation of shared space.

In order to implement our strategies and systems and test their spatial impact three test sites are strategically selected: the centralized transfer hub at the edge of the belt, the decentralized neighborhood hub and the typical neighborhood of the generic tissue condition.

Restructuring the 20th Century Belt

Mobility-Waste-Energy Flows & Synergies

Mobility, waste and energy constitute the three main pillars behind the basic strategies. When each one is broken down into smaller components, various linkages, at different scales start to appear, (Fig. 1) stressing the complexity of the urban context. In particular, four scales are mainly addressed: the ‘large’ – city/district scale, the ‘medium’neighborhood scale, the ‘small’ - block scale, and the ‘extra small’ - building scale. The ‘extra large’ - territorial scale is used to test that the new flows work at the rest of the scales. An average neighborhood of 3000 inhabitants is considered.

From a spatial perspective the three main flows meet and interact at strategic places around the belt, which function as hubs. Those can vary, based on the scale and the purpose that they serve, leading to a territory of micro-centralities that can gradually attract densification. The hubs range from the neighborhood to the city/district scale.

The mesh that is created forms an alternative to the current radial model, which mainly emphasizes the connections between the districts and the center, rather than the inner-belt links. In order for it to work the notion of proximity between living and working places is also introduced, suggesting that the inhabitants of the 20th century belt work or have their businesses in the belt, as well. Within this urban context new amenities are gradually attracted by the micro-centralities.

One fundamental aspect of the hubs is that the systems are always combined with the flow of people, which makes the process of activation of the surrounding area more tangible. In parallel, those places are more likely to attract future densification, since the framework there will have been already partly set. Within this context, the hubs themselves as well as their influence grow gradually and in close relation to the densification and activation processes.

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Figure 1

An overview of the systems, strategies & synergies at the XS/S/M/L scales

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Mobility Flows: Flow of People

As far as mobility is concerned, the main idea is to minimize the use of private car and to gradually reclaim the ‘wasted’ space that is now dedicated to it, such as parking lots, private garages and oversized infrastructures. An alternative to the existing mobility system is to promote car sharing, to give more space to bikes and to enhance public transportation, creating as many options as possible. This is supported to a large extent by the idea of proximity between living, working and amenities. In this re-envisioned mobility system (Fig. 16), private cars stop at the Parks and Rides around the belt, where centralized hubs are created (Fig. 2). Those are usually combined with tram terminals and function as multimodal nodes and gates to the city of Antwerp. On the other hand, decentralized, neighborhood hubs inside the belt serve as car and bike sharing points, usually combined with public transport stops and shops or supermarkets (Fig. 3).

Figure 2

Flow of people in the centralised-outer transfer hub

Figure 3

Flow of people in the decentralised-inner transfer hub

Figure 4

Transporttion of people & multimodality in the 20th century belt

Depending on the time needed and on the available means of transportation one can chose the most suitable way of commuting. This multimodality and abundance of options and links allows for a more open-ended alternative to the relatively rigid and restrictive current system of tramways, which is more based on the ‘tree structure’1

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Mobility Flows: Flow of Goods

Along with the flow of people, the flow of goods is also re-engineered. Trucks, trains or boats stop at the edge of the belt, at the logistics hubs that contain big storage spaces used by various supermarket chains. A basic hypothesis here is that due to the implementation of the supply by demand principle, the on-site storage spaces of the supermarkets in the belt are gradually going to shrink. It is therefore obvious that extra space will be liberated in the 20th century belt.

With the shared platforms located close to the belt, supermarkets can be supplied on a daily basis by ‘greener’ means of transportation2. From the logistics hubs goods are moved with electric vans or cargo trams either to the big stores and supermarkets in the belt or to the neighborhood hubs (Fig. 5) that have small points for collection and temporal storage of little packages and post. In the neighborhood hubs there are points of cargo bike and bike trailer sharing, so that goods and groceries can be transported in a sustainable way (Fig. 6&7).

Flow

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Transporttion of goods & multimodality in the 20th century belt

Flow of goods in the centralised-outer transfer hub

of goods in the decentralised-inner transfer hub

Waste Flows

As far as waste is concerned it is mainly regarded as a valuable resource, which becomes part of the everyday experience at the hubs rather than something that has to be moved away from the urban environment. The two main types of waste that are valorized are organic solid waste and wastewater (Fig. 10).

More specifically, compostable organic household waste is converted into fertilizer at the scale of the building or at the scale of the block, in private or collective gardens respectively (Fig. 8).

On the other hand, non-compostable organic waste is stored temporarily at the neighborhood hubs, before it is transported to the anaerobic digesters, which are located in the outer hubs. Depending on their size, those can also receive animal and agricultural waste from the surrounding farmlands. In this case the flow is exactly the opposite of the one of goods, which suggests a synergy between mobility and waste. The same vehicles that bring the goods from the outer to the inner hubs are used to move waste on their way back. At the neighborhood scale, people who visit the hubs to do their shopping or pick-up their package can also use their cargo bikes to bring their waste (Fig. 9). In case of goods delivery, the same company takes back the waste to the collection point at the hub. The real time app can be enhanced to give information on the availability of space for temporal waste storage. Since this collection point is in close proximity to the collection of packages and to the multimodal node it needs to be kept clean. The supermarkets provide the appropriate bags to the inhabitants, playing a key role in this respect.

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Composting organic waste at the block scale

Figure 8

Considering wastewater the basic concept is that of gradually separating rain, grey and black water flows, aiming to achieve the maximum benefits from all the three of them. As it has already been mentioned in the second chapter, the big centralized wastewater treatment plants do not have the capacity to meet the needs of the new population of Antwerp. Three different systems are therefore proposed, as an alternative to the currently combined, wasteful, centralized sewage system, only the one remaining centralized. In particular, the rainwater is collected and purified at the building or block scale in roofs and gardens, the blackwater is treated at the neighborhood scale to produce energy, whereas the grey water continues using the existing pipelines.

Flows of waste in the 20th century belt

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Energy Flows

The energy pillar combines a bunch of simple but innovative technologies that generate or recycle electricity, heat and biogas to cover the needs of buildings and vehicles at multiple scales. The main principles here are the investment in renewable resources, the generation of energy from waste and the creation of decentralized, ‘smart’ energy networks (Fig. 15)

Waste to Energy - Blackwater & Organic Waste

Blackwater is detached from the central system to produce energy for the neighborhood that it comes from (Fig. 11). Those produce biogas which is converted to electricity and heat that goes back to the buildings, closing the circle. Each of the decentralised blackwater treatment plants serves about 3000 inhabitants, with a capacity to cover 50% of the electricity and 30% of their heat needs 3

Waste to Energy - Recovery of Wasted Heat from Greywater

The already high temperature of the water in the sewers is used to create a heat network at the neighborhood scale, via heat pumps, installed every 300 meters 4. The average temperature of the greywater ranges between 13 and 20°C, whereas with the help of the pump it can reach a 35 – 65 °C 5. In several cases this network can be complementary to that of blackwater, so that a higher percentage of heat needs is covered. (Fig. 12)

Energy for Mobility - Solar Panels & Smart Charging Poles

At the scale of the building block the pilot project of Lombok district in Utrecht is used as a reference of a smart synergy between energy and mobility 6 According to this solar panels

are installed on the roofs of the buildings to produce electricity from solar energy. Excess electricity during sunny days is stored in batteries for charging and in cloudy weather or night, the chargers give back the electricity to the households for their own needs (Fig. 13).

Energy for Mobility - Energy Recovery from Tram Braking

Kinetic energy from braking is recovered in the form of electricity, which can be stored and used by the tram itself for acceleration or by other vehicles7 (Fig. 14)

Figure 11

Heating from blackwater at the neighborhood scale

Figure 12

Heating from greywater at the neighborhood scale

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Figure 13

Solar Panels & Smart Charging Poles

Figure 14

Energy Recovery from Tram Braking

Figure 15

Flows of waste in the 20th century belt

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Re-envisioning the ‘Big’ Mobility

In order to support the three systems and make their implementation more realistic it is essential to have a reflection on the big mobility system of Antwerp.

Based on the aforementioned studies as well as on the exploration of other possible alternatives this thesis proposes a new underground ring below the existing R11. The option of the tunnel below R11 allows for a more extended soft network

The proposed mobility scheme aims to contribute to a change in mindset concerning the use of private car. This justifies the choice of an open, rather than a closed loop around the city of Antwerp. Although all the possibilities of commuting remain there, the connections become slower and less direct.

Proposal for the new mobility at the regional scale

The Timeline of the ‘Big’ Mobility & the Gradual Transformation of the

As argued by Pierre Belanger in ‘Landscape Infrastructure: Urbanism beyond Engineering’ 8 , systemic design is a multi-dimensional, cross scale, long-term process of cyclic, rather than linear urbanism that aims to transform a specific context. Since many different flows and actors are involved change happens in phases.

In this project, short, medium and long term goals three phases are used: today-2020, 2020-2030 and 2030-2070 (Fig. 17). The first one includes the changes that can take place immediately, in order to prepare for a shift in mindset, the second one illustrates a greater shift, at the moment when the population will have already increased significantly, whereas the third one envisions a radically transformed 20th century belt.

Phase I [2016-2020]

What can be done tomorrow is to start creating the inner and outer hubs in strategic places (Fig. 17). This happens through interventions that introduce new flows and cycles in the systems of mobility, energy and waste. The strategies for the hubs go hand in hand with the decrease in the number of private cars that can enter the belt, which is going to be reduced by 30% during the first phase. Thus fewer parking spaces are provided in the belt, whereas the parks & rides at the outer hubs increase, in order to catch the cars before they enter the belt. Regarding the inner hubs, they are equipped with large car sharing points, as well as with smart charging poles for electric vehicles. Some of the anaerobic digesters are also installed in the decentralized hubs by 2020, depending on the available building mass that they can serve. Supermarkets, schools and social housing complexes are the first to be detached

also contributes to the reclamation of hard surfaces. In parallel, some of the private garage structures that occupy a significant amount of space in the blocks can be reused for different activities, or removed to be transformed into collective gardens.

Phase II [2020-2030]

At a second phase, by 2030 (Fig. 17), a further decrease, of approximately 70% in the number of private cars takes place. This suggests that after 2020 some of the streets in the belt change profile. The existing big radial highways shrink and are partially converted into soft environments. Furthermore, bike lines along radial tram roads are highlighted, whereas the big tangential bicycle highway is established. Moreover, parking spaces are further decreased and reclaimed, whereas the network of smart charging poles and solar panels is extended around the neighborhoods, to encourage electric car and bike sharing. Heat pumps of greywater are placed. On the other hand, decentralized blackwater plants are installed in all the inner hubs, since the new houses need to be connected. The works for the construction of the tunnel below R11 begin during this second stage. After works finish, the hubs are reopened to vehicles and the anaerobic digesters can be installed to change the organic, food waste flows in the 20th century belt.

Phase III [2030/2070]

At the final phase, by 2070 (Fig. 17), 99% of private cars are eliminated. The inner ring and the big radial highways are completely reclaimed and converted to a network of green and recreational spaces. This is enhanced by an extensive network

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Figure 17:

Overview of the ‘big’ transformations in the 20th century belt

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Strategic Plan for the 20th century Belt Figure 18:

Part 2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

The systemic transect - systems, flows, strategies and phasing Figure 19

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

SPOTLIGHTING

THE 20TH CENTURY BELT Research by Design Areas

The objective of this last chapter is to investigate the spatial effect of the strategies for mobility, waste and energy. In particular, it aims to illustrate how the implementation of the new systems can gradually transform the 20th century belt into a qualitative urban environment, while supporting the densification process.

Three test sites are strategically selected to represent the belt, as generic conditions: the centralized transfer hub at the edge of the belt, the decentralized neighborhood hub and the generic tissue neighborhood. The selection is based on several criteria, such as the spatial qualities, the combination of tissue typologies, the location and the existing amenities and programmes. Since each of the sites combines different aspects, together they cover most of the qualities of the 20th century belt.

Considering the proposed strategies the main focus varies, according to the case. In the two hubs more emphasis is put on the systems that support densification. On the other hand, the strategies developed for the generic tissue neighborhood deal primarily with the densification itself. In every site, space is shaped gradually over time, through a dynamic process. The three strategically selected cases have the potential to function as pilot projects that can gradually stimulate other similar ones, all around the belt.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Figure 20

The location of the 3 research by design areas in the 20th century belt

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

The Decentralised Neighborhood Hub

For the design of the decentralised neighborhood hub a strategically located site, in Hoboken is selected. This is composed of two attached blocks that currently work as one because of the flows attracted by the amenities of the area. Together they form a big, hybrid, partially open block with defined edges and fragmented core. The site combines several typologies of tissues, such as big supermarkets with attached parking lots and warehouses, low rise stripes with private backyards, detached apartment buildings, some of which are high-rise and attached single family houses or apartment buildings, mainly along the edges.

At a broader framework, there is a contrast between the character of Sint-Bernardsesteenweg to the east and Weerstandlaan to the west. Whereas the first is a busy, commercial tram road, the second is a calmer, neighborhood street. At the opposite direction, the site marks the transition between the social housing neighbourhood of Kiel, to the north and the low rise neighbourhood, to the south-west.

One of the main issues in this area is the fragmented, mono-functional interior of the block, which acts like a big backside, partly due to the programmes that it concentrates and partly because of its spatial structure. Although it is quite active during the opening hours of the supermarkets it turns into an underused space during the night, when the shops are closed. Additionally, a big amount of space is occupied by low quality storage buildings that create divisions, instead of links. On the other hand,

however, the existing pedestrian flows have a strong potential to change the image of the whole site.

Regarding the tissue that is facing the main street, it basically consists of narrow, substandard buildings.

The supermarket as a generator of flows

‘Wasted’ space for the carbarriers - fragmentation

Big monofunctional platforms in the middle of the block

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Figure 21 Figure 22

The key elements of the site at the big scale

The key elements of the site at the small scale

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

school - evening seminars on waste sorting

Axonometric view of the decentralised neighborhood hub in 2070

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2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

LIVING IN THE PARK - MIXING OLD AND YOUNG - ENCOURAGING COLLECTIVITY

Small strategies for densification & activation in the decentralised neighborhood hub

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THE EXCHANGE ROOF AND THE ACTIVATION OF THE HUB

TURNING THE BACKSIDE INTO A FRONT SIDE - GYM & PLAYGROUND

MAIN ENTRANCE TO THE HUB

COMMERCIAL ATTRACTORS - ESIDENTIAL ON TOP

ACTIVATION

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Figure 25

The main design elements

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The Centralized Transfer Hub

The site selected for the design of the centralised transfer hub is located at the edge of the belt, in Wommelgem. It is characterised by the intersection of R11 and Herentalsebaan, as well as by the tram terminal, which mark it as an entrance point to the 20th century belt. Some of the main aspects of this research by design area are the oversized roads which are dominated by the car, the big, mono-functional, space consuming platforms which function as a rupture to the generic row houses and the sports center. On the other hand, the adjacent network of community gardens, as well as the forest and the creek to the north-east add a soft layer to the qualities of the site.

Big monofunctional platforms & ‘wasted’ space for the car

Big, undefined car oriented space around the tram terminal

R11 - typical Belgian Steenweg with unsafe crossing for pedestrians

Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

new mixed residential area tram stop bus stop e-bike sharing school new extention collective garden Figure 26

Axonometric view of the centralised transfer hub in 2070

bike sharing

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2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Small strategies for densification & activation in the centralised transfer hub Figure 27

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NEW

NEW ENTRANCE TO THE CITY OF ANTWERP TOWER FOR LIVING WORKING -

L-SHAPE TYPOLOGY FOR MIXED POPULATION & LINEAR HOUSING WITH PRIVATE BACKYARDS LIVING AND NEW LANDMARK

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Figure 28

Delayering the design elements

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Figure 29

Perspective view of the centralised hub and tower - landmark

Part 2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

The Generic Tissue Neighborhood

As its name suggests, the generic tissue neighbourhood in Berchem forms a typical condition in the 20th century Belt. It is basically a combination of two generic conditions of tissue typologies: the high-rise towers in the middle of green space and the homogeneous, closed blocks, with an average building height of 2 to 3 floors. As far as the first type is concerned, the main issue is the underused open space around the towers.

One of the most significant aspects in the second case is the inaccessible and inactive block interior. This is partly due to the private backyards that follow the division of the properties into small plots and partly to the garage buildings or underused workshops that block the space in the middle. In parallel, the whole neighbourhood is characterised by relatively inactive ground floors both because it is mainly residential and due to the fact that the car dominates the streets. The proportion of street width and building height in several cases, such as along Jupiterstaat suggests that there is a high densification potential. This street is actually the transition between the two tissue typologies.

Underused backyards

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Empty neighbourhood square

Isolated towers

Figure 30 Figure 31

The key elements of the site at the big scale

The key elements of the site at the small scale

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

mixed residential tower

reclaimed inner yards Figure 32

Axonometric view of the generic tissue neighborhood in 2070

bike sharing roof garden e-car sharing

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2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

DENSIFICATION STRATEGY 1 TERRACE FACING OPEN SPACE

PAVILIONS

DENSIFICATION STRATEGY 2 HIGHER ON EDGES, LOWER IN MIDDLE

DENSIFICATION STRATEGY 3 HIGHER ON THE CORNERS

Small strategies for densification & activation in the generic tissue neighborhood hub Figure 33

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

DENSIFICATION STRATEGY 4 HIGHER WHEN FACING MAIN STREETS; DENSIFY IN COMBINED

PAVILIONS SERVING FOR THE NEIGHBOURHOOD WITHIN THE INNER OF BLOCKS

ACTIVE SQUARE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

COMBINED PRIVATE OWNERS

Phasing of the transormations in the deep section _ Phase III [2070]

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Figure 35

The main design elements

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Figure 36

Phasing of the transormations in the deep section _ Phase 0 (2016) - II (2030)

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Authors: Glenn Somers

Israel Ketema Elefenh Jingyue Yan

Li Mengling

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2.1.3 Stitching the 20th Century Belt: Toward a Healthy Urbanism for Future Densification

The three themes that this project is dealing with are FOOD, TRANSIT, and SOCIAL MIX. Our analysis made it clear that moving within the belt mainly happens by car. Public transport and important roads lead you to the city center, while moving radially inside the belt is difficult. This insight is furthermore supported by how people buy their food; 80% of the inhabitants get their fresh food from the supermarket. Nevertheless inside the belt there is a sufficient amount of people that do not have a supermarket within bicycle distance, which makes them use their car. We will intervene in the food chain in two ways: the distribution of the food and the vast amount of food that is wasted. We question the existing supermarket-system, which is consuming much space and results in much food-waste. Our intervention will make it possible to pick up your food close-by and leave the car at home.

Moving inside the belt will have to happen more and more in a sustainable way. Important mobility nodes are upgraded and made multimodal. We see these spaces as good point for densification. Furthermore we introduce more fresh-food markets where farmers can sell their goods on a daily basis and more community gardens to bring the 80% down and in this way shorten the chain. Our interventions can be seen as a sort of urban acupuncture in strategic spaces to create

relationships between different kinds of people. From old people to young, from professional farmers to community garden-‘amateurs’, from natives to migrants, and so on. In the end we believe that we create a stronger community that will be able to live in the belt of Antwerp in a more healthy way.

Through four schemes and four maps we show our analysis, and present a reaction to the issues we deal with: car-oriented transit, food distribution, food loss, and lack of public space. We then present four strategies that correspond with the four problematics. These strategies are then explained by means of a systemic section that shows cyclic linkages. Photomontages show how this system would spatially manifest itself. Eventually we will show our strategies on a city-scale map and by means of two zooms.

Identified Issues

CAR ORIENTED TRANSIT. The current food system promotes car-use. Movement inside the belt from one municipality to another is difficult since public transport is oriented towards the center. Moving radially in the belt requires a car. The map shows the gaps in the public transport system.

FOOD DISTRIBUTION. Most people buy their food at the supermarket. The supermarkets manifest themselves as cannibals in the urban tissue. They consume open space, and claim it as parking. The map shows the holes in the belt were people are not within bikable istance of the supermarket.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

FOOD LOSS. Today a large amount of food is lost in the chain. A big portion is wasted at the level of the households. Stores sell large packs of goods, which also makes transporting the purchases more difficult, and again promotes the use of cars.

LACK OF PUBLIC SPACE. The map shows areas that today are not connected within walkable distance to some sort of qualitative public space. This is problematic. Furthermore if in the future the belt will become more dense, more public space in general will be needed.

Response Strategies

MULTIMODAL NODES.

We want to facilitate radial movement by introducing a system of electrical rental bikes and cars at current transit nodes and in the gaps. These will become more multimodal. For the transit of food, we think again that he existing system can be improved. Since the supermarkets will be shrinked we need big collection point to temporary store all the goods. These can be inserted in industrial areas near a rail or at the canal. From there a goods-tram can bring the products in the city.

SHRINKED SUPERMARKET.

We believe the supermarket system can be retought in order to diminish its impact on the neighborhood. By introducing an electronic order and pick-up system the occupied surface can be limited and reconverted into new housing areas, with qualitative public space. In the ‘gaps’ we introduce pick-up points at existing institutons in order to limit the travel distance and thus ‘fill the gaps’.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

UPCYCLING.

The food waste has more possibilities then putting it into the garbage. We believe it can be collected at the supermarket, to create a critical mass. People of the neighborhood bring their waste and get a reduction for new purchases. The products are then upcycled locally. This process also adds to the social process, since this creates job opportunities for more volnurable groups.

REQUALIFYING VACANT SPACE.

All our interventions always also deal with enhancing public life. Vacant or undersed areas will be reshaped into platforms which make sponanous or organised events possible. The public realm becomes the area of the people again, while now it belongs to the car.

City-Scale Section

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

City-Scale Section

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Contextual Phasing Process

INTERVENTION

TYPE 1.

A square is made car-free, and is converted into a qualitative public space. This space is a platform for spontanous (and/or orgnised) events, such as food squatting. Moreover ‘together-gardening’ enhances community bonding.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

INTERVENTION TYPE 2.

Streets that in time can be car-free, become attractive places to further promote soft-mobility. Furthermore garages become irrelevant and are changed into lofts, or ateliers. Vacant stores are activated through pop-up institutions that for example can deal with the upcycling of food waste.

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Contextual Phasing Process

INTERVENTION TYPE 3

Delicate places, as for example this park, can be activated by introducing urban gardening. This can be a place to teach people about where the food comes from and when to eat what type of fruit and vegetables. Furthermore it can be a platform for professional farmers to sell their goods close to the people.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

SPACE FOR SOFT MOBILITY

ELECTRICAL BIKE RENTING

+ ELECTRICAL CAR RENTING TRAM HAS PRIORITY ON CROSSROADS

DENSIFICATION PROJECTS IN LOW-RISE TISSUE. ATTRACTIVE PUBLIC SPACE

INTERVENTION TYPE 4

Transit nodes are made more multimodal, by inserting flexible soft mobility systems as electrical bike and car sharing. In a later phase the node can be upgraded into a qualitative public space. It is an ideal place for densification, since the new inhabitants will be wel connected to public transport.

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

City-Scale Strategy Map

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Challenges and Strategies

A healthier life style is not invisible, but rather can have visible spatial and societal facets that restructure the 20th century belt. This is the theme of our strategy: stitching the 20th century belt by making ‘healthy’ visible, physical and urban. By the systematic design of daily-life spaces in the 20th century belt, the 20th century belt will provide a more coherent, livable environment for the future population. Our design started from three systems for the belt, Transit, Food and Public Space. By questioning whether the current system is healthy for the city and citizens, we identified both challenges and potentials for the area.

When we envision the 20th century belt for future densification - a 21st century one, we have to answer to the challenges of the current systems of food and transit, which do not reflect a 21st century life-style. The current car-oriented life style which dominates the belt, occupies a spatial structure for car-based infrastructure, like bix box super markets, designed for weekly onestop grocery shopping, by car. The products are usually packaged in big portions that persuade people to buy weekly amounts, instead of a small portion daily. It leads to a consequence of food loss at the consumer level. Furthermore, the 20th century belt is lacking quality public spaces for some neighborhoods. On the other hand, huge urban vacant space is produced as a by-product of big supermarkets: parking areas, truck loading and car-oriented infrastructure.

For the future population, in our proposal, we are purposing strategies for healthy ways to fix current problems. By changing the un-healthy life-style of food and transit, it can lead to more social coherence and space efficiency.

1. The current transit system will be enhanced by a smart transit and ride system to fix the gap between different public transportation. The new multi-functional transit nodes are chosen through a detailed analysis of current public transport system.

2. The supermarket distribution mode will be re-structured by an order and pick-up system. By transforming current supermarkets and institutions into online ordering and offline picking points, more neighborhoods can reach their collection point of daily products in a bicycle distance. On the other hand, the local food market will be enhanced by the application of the pick-up system. Farmers will have more access to distribute their products according to people’s need.

3. As a consequence of adding new collection points, the current supermarkets will shrink in both space and function. The space occupied by low-density supermarkets will shrink and provide more space for densification projects and multi-functional public space.

4. All these new transit nodes and multifunctional distribution nodes will be the strategic point areas for future densification.

These strategies will lead to a healthier 21st century belt, where people are less cardependent, have more access to local fresh food and less food loss, and additionally become participants in this process. The social mix will happen during the local re-distribution of food loss and the fresh food. The space will be re-qualified as the car will gradually fade out from the streets. In this way, the strategy is stitching 20th century belt for its space and people.

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

Zoom One: Prins-Boudewijnlaan,

Berchem

UPGRADED NODE

This first zoom is located along the PrinsBoudewijnlaan, which is one of the main axes of the neighborhood. There is an important node there consisting of a tram stop at the hospital and the university. The node even attracts people from outside of the belt, because of its superlocal functions. Today the hospital is fenced off from the neighborhood. We turn it into a vibrant area, where community gardening and a daily fresh-food market go together. People are educated by the professional gardeners. The hospital can work together with the fresh food market to provide healthy food for their patients. Around the node densifiction is possible. Even large scale tower-typologies are suitable because of the vast space and the superlocal character of the node. The new population can develop a car-free habit since they are well connected. The existing tram stop is extended with electrical rental cars and bikes.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

NODE BECOMES A DESTINATION IN STEAD OF A PLACE TO PASS-BY.

DAILY FRESH FOOD MARKET IN THE GAP;

COMMUNITY GARDENING

EFFICIENT INFRASTRUCTURE FOR SOFT MOBILITY

DENSIFICATION AROUND THE NODE.

ELECTRICAL RENTAL CARS AND BIKES

Zoom Two: Bredabaan, Merksem

SHRINKED SUPERMARKET

The second zoom is located along the Bredabaan in Merksem. The node is characterized by the presence of a supermarket, a square and a tramstop where two important lines cross. We see this node as an opportunity for densification, in the sense of housing but also for public amenities. The existing supermarket occupies the whole heart of the building block. By intoducing the collect & go system, the display space for the goods an the parkings become unneeded and can be converted in a housing area. The new builings are framed by a landscape structure of community gardens and waterbodies collecting the rain water. The ground floors can will have functions as a repair cafe, a space for upcycling food waste, communal functions, etc. The square is the place where a goods-tram can deliver the food packages, and from there it is brought to the collect & go spots in the vicinity by cargo-bikes.

PARKING TRAM STOP

EXISTING SUPERMARKET PARKING

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

COMMUNITY GARDEN

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

A History of the Future of the 20th C. Belt

Antwerp, Belgium

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp | A History of the Future

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2016 - Pop-Up Community Event

2020 - Flexible Urbanity: Social Engagement

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2025 - The People Regulate their Street Market Digitally

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp | A History of the Future

2025 - Food Connection

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2030 - The Nuclear Plant has Shut Down

2035 - Neighborhood Scale Energy Production

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp

2050 - Algae for Energy

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2055 - Climate Change: The Big Flood

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

2070 - Biodivesity is Back

2: Urban Systems for The Densification of the 20th C. Belt of Antwerp | A History of the Future

2100 - Urban Leisure: View from the Top

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Conclusion

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

Conclusion

In this age of diminishing resources, humaninduced climate change, and growing urban population, urbanization that only consumes is no longer justified. It is possible to have urbanization that is productive, ecologically sound, and responsive of the coming challenges. For future generations, disciplines that are involved in shaping the built form have a responsibility to orientate toward the future, its needs, and its changing patterns. The city is a complex transforming being, and solutions must address its complexities and have the ability to adapt over time in order to be resilient.

The studio became a platform to research, by design, ways to respond to the complexities at play, in an environment that encourages dialogue between different disciplines and different stakes, to allow for a cross-over of ideas and views from different perspectives. The results of this studio show that designing for the future city is ultimately based on an open mindset one of cross-over and blurring lines, a mindset to be ecologically sound, a mindset of productivity, and of re-directing flows from one process to the other, eliminating waste in between. It is a mindset that attempts to capture the dimension of time, and to think about the changing nature of the city, through imagining scenarios at different levels of its transformation.

It is a mindset of extracting and generating the logics of the city that are both visible and invisible. It is a mindset that attempts to bridge large scale infrastructural solutions that affect the city as a whole, with small scale manifestations that affect inhabitants at the human scale. Between those two scales, the large and the small, the communal neighborhood, the medium, becomes an essential link that bridges how big ideas come down to ‘touch’ the ground. This multi-scalar approach to deal with different aspects of a system allows the creation of links between the global and the local, the city and the individual, through the communal. This notion of the neighborhood, the communal, is an aspect quite dis-regarded in 19th and 20th century planning - an engineering of cities that does not respond to 21st century needs and lifestyles.

The 21st century lifestyle is an adaptive one: it is flexible, it is ever-changing; it is pragmatic, in contrast to the singular rigidity of the cities we inherited from our fathers and their fore-fathers before them. To make radical changes to our cities, we need to re-think flows, re-visualize systems, and re-construct links. We need to link cycles, re-think territories and imagine futures.

Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

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Cyclic Urbanism: Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures

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Spring 2016 MAHS/MAUSP Studio

STUDIO TUTORS AND COORDINATORS

Racha Daher, Bruno De Meulder

STUDIO SUPPORT TEAM

Julie Marin, Cecilia Furlan

PUBLICATION EDITOR

Racha Daher

As the global urban population continues to increase, cities are confronted with major challenges to provide infrastructures such as food, water, energy, waste management, mobility and public space (among others). In a time where resources for energy production are diminishing, cities need to make radical shifts in their urbanization patterns: linear patterns are no longer effective to deal with the complexity of the challenges faced. Using en ecological frame of mind, together with cyclic systems thinking, this studio investigated three locations, Megalopolis, Charleroi and Antwerp, to explore circular logics for a productive and transforming urbanism.

ISBN: 9789460189975

Wettelijk depot: D/2016/7515/17

Linking Cycles, Rethinking Territories, and Imagining Futures