Nature Driven Urbanism

340 Pages·2020·33.314 MB·English

by  Rob Roggema

Contemporary Urban Design Thinking
Rob Roggema Editor
Nature Driven
Urbanism
Contemporary Urban Design Thinking
Series Editor
Rob Roggema
Research Centre for the Built Environment NoorderRuimte
Hanze University of Applied Sciences
Groningen, The Netherlands
CITTA IDEALE
Office for Adaptive Planning
Wageningen, The Netherlands
This series will investigate contemporary insights in urban design theory and
practice. Urbanism has considerably changed and developed over the years and is
about to undergo a transformation moving into a new era.
In the 1990’s and early 2000’s economic driven urban design was prevalent in
many countries around the world. Moving forward it is no longer feasible to
continue to develop in the same way and new ideas for creating urbanism are
urgently required.
This series will publish titles dealing with innovative methods of urbanism
including, sustainability driven urbanism, smart urbanism, population driven
urbanism, and landscape based urban design.
The series will include books by top researchers and leaders in the fields of urban
design, city development and landscape urbanism. The books will contain the most
recent insights into urbanism and will provide actual and timely reports filling a gap
in the current literature.
The series will appeal to urbanists, landscape architects, architects, policy
makers, city/urban planners, urban designers/researchers, and to all of those
interested in a wide-ranging overview of contemporary urban design innovations in
the field.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15794
Rob Roggema
Editor
Nature Driven Urbanism
Editor
Rob Roggema
Research Centre for the Built Environment NoorderRuimte
Hanze University of Applied Sciences
Groningen, The Netherlands
CITTA IDEALE
Office for Adaptive Planning
Wageningen, The Netherlands
ISSN 2522-8404 ISSN 2522-8412 (electronic)
Contemporary Urban Design Thinking
ISBN 978-3-030-26716-2 ISBN 978-3-030-26717-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26717-9
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Contents
1 Nature-Driven Urbanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Rob Roggema
2 Contrast, Contact, Contract; Pathways to Pacify Urbanization
and Natural Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Dirk Sijmons
3 Temporary Nature - A Win-Win for Nature and Developers:
Tinkering with the Law in Order to Combat Biodiversity Loss . . . . . 43
Chris Backes, Arnold van Kreveld, and Hendrik Schoukens
4 Stepping-Stone City: Process-Oriented Infrastructures
to Aid Forest Migration in a Changing Climate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Qiyao Han and Greg Keeffe
5 Landscape First! Nature-Driven Design
for Sydney’s Third City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Rob Roggema
6 From Urban Green Structure to Tidal River in Rotterdam:
Testing Grounds for Urban Ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Nico Tillie
7 From Urban Acupuncture to the Third Generation City . . . . . . . . . . 131
Marco Casagrande
8 Urbanism on Water and Ecology: The Early Example
of Westerpark, Breda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Rob Roggema
9 Blue Design for Urban Resilience in Drylands:
The Case of Qatar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Anna Grichting
v
vi Contents
10 South Creek in Far Western Sydney:
Opportunities for a New Waterway Focused City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Phillip James Birtles
11 Nature-Inclusive Cities: Concepts and Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Stewart Monti
12 Exploring New Urban Futures Through Sydney’s Hidden Grids . . . 249
Mark Tyrrell
13 A Bold Vision for Sydney’s Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Dajon Veldman
14 A Contemporary Approach to the Design of Road Transport
Infrastructure in Balance with the Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Gareth Paul Collins
15 Bio-inspiration: Merging Nature and Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Chris Bosse
16 The Future of Nature-driven Urbanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Rob Roggema
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Chapter 1
Nature-Driven Urbanism
Rob Roggema
Abstract The city is nature. In many ways this bold statement can be contested, but
at the same time wildlife is so abundant Rotterdam is called a wilderness park
(Reumer, Wildpark Rotterdam. De stad als natuurgebied. Historische Uitgeverij,
Groningen, 2014). One can discuss whether this is true or not, but more interesting
is to see the city as a piece of nature, and as such undertake the actions to develop it
further. In a city nature should not be treated as something worth to preserve, after
all such unique nature can hardly be found inside urban contexts, rather something
to increase, enrich and make more resilient.
Keywords Nature · Urban ecology · Urban nature · Nature-driven · Nature-based
solutions
The city is nature. In many ways this bold statement can be contested, but at the
same time wildlife is so abundant Rotterdam is called a wilderness park (Reumer
2014). One can discuss whether this is true or not, but more interesting is to see the
city as a piece of nature, and as such undertake the actions to develop it further. In a
city nature should not be treated as something worth to preserve, after all such
unique nature can hardly be found inside urban contexts, rather something to
increase, enrich and make more resilient.
Nature in cities is discovered. In many studies ‘green Infrastructure’ is declared
to be beneficial to decrease concentration disorder with kids, reduce violence in
house, minimize obesity, reduce the recovery time after illness and improve the
exercise rate of people living close to green spaces (see Chap. 5).
Green cover, trees, green roofs and facades have the ability to reduce the Urban
Heat Island (UHI) effect, a phenomenon that, with climate change, will increase in
the (near) future. Recently an Urban heat island is no longer defined as an island in
R. Roggema (*)
Research Centre for the Built Environment NoorderRuimte,
Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen, The Netherlands
CITTA IDEALE, Office for Adaptive Planning, Wageningen, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1
R. Roggema (ed.), Nature Driven Urbanism, Contemporary Urban Design
Thinking, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26717-9_1
2 R. Roggema
Fig. 1.1 Urban heat Continents in Sydney (Brook 2019)
a broader urban context, but the first ‘urban continents of heat (Fig. 1.1), a conglom-
erate of linked islands, have been identified (Brook 2019). Health of human beings,
but also of the ecosystems themselves are at stake, and a profound effort to increase
the amount and quality of green spaces is needed to create livable urban areas. And
with green spaces close to home being beneficial for your health, it also increases
the real estate value of your house (Swinbourne and Rozenwax 2018) hence there is
no reason not to pay more attention to green in the urban environment.
Even in highly technological contexts the value of green and nature is increas-
ingly used as an important factor in city planning, as is proven in ten cities in the US
(Ahuja 2016). The starting point of designing the city driven by nature, is to analyze
the existing pockets of nature, such as the Nature map of Rotterdam (LOLA 2016)
illustrates (Fig. 1.2). The map also illustrates the fragmented nature of the existing
patches of ecological valuable space.
If we take a look at how the population values green and landscape space it
becomes clear the landscapes close to urban or industrialized land use are valued
significantly lower than green and undisrupted areas (Buijs et al. 2019). So, what
can be concluded is that on the one hand side people value green and nature in their
vicinity, it also has benefits for their wellbeing, but on the other side green spaces
are diminishing, fragmented and losing a critical size. Therefore, a fundamental
choice has to be made: we no longer pursue better and more nature in the urban
environment, or we take it seriously hence pay more attention. The latter seems to
be the preferred choice for all the good reasons, however existing habits of urban-
ization prevent this from happening (Fig. 1.3).
1 Nature-Driven Urbanism 3
Fig. 1.2 Urban nature map Rotterdam (LOLA 2016)
In order to comply with the desired role of nature and green a new approach to
urban design is needed (Garrard et al. 2017). The following objectives can be
defined:
1. To protect and create habitat, extend the size of small areas;
2. To help species disperse, establish connections between ecological cores;
3. To minimize anthropogenic threats, minimize environmental impacts and
disturbance;
4. To promote ecological processes, allow the space for ecology to emerge, decline,
grow, and follow the resilience cycle (Holling and Gunderson 2002);
5. To encourage positive human-nature interactions through arranging green in
close proximity and improving the accessibility of green spaces.
A range of design solutions are possible (Roijackers 2017), such as green roofs
and facades, climate trees and water to deal with heat stress, planting trees, wadi’s,
infiltration gardens and water squares to minimize urban floods, using helophytes to
improve the water quality, integrate sufficient parks, trees and green to improve the
air quality and reduce sealed surfaces, enlarge the area of parks and green spaces
and increase the number of street trees to contribute to biodiversity.