Urban landscape design exercises in urban metabolism: reconnecting with Central Limburg's regenerative resource landscape

Abstract

The design research presented here uses urban landscape design to attempt to reframe sustainable resource management. Urban metabolism projects generally originate in industrial ecology, emphasizing performance-oriented technical and entrepreneurial approaches. 1 However, industrial ecology approaches experience difficulties in making meaningful connections to social, economic and spatial contexts. Building on landscape architecture analysis and design methods such as mapping and systemic design, this article will highlight urban landscape design's capacity to reframe questions stemming from the urban metabolism model through the production of future imaginaries. Using the Belgian Central Limburg region's transition into a circular economy as a design exercise, this paper suggests that urban landscape design's constructivist approach 2 has the potential to embed social and economic dimensions in applying urban metabolism. Operating 'from within' its intervention field, urban landscape design potentially facilitates transdisciplinary dialogues in urban metabolism design research. Keywords urban landscape design / urban metabolism / circular economy / systemic design / Belgium Designing urban metabolisms With the increasing complexity of urban growth in the twentieth century, the integration of urbanism, engineering and planning became more and more difficult. Nowadays, subsurface utilities are typically conceived by engineers, while planners and urbanists design the urban spaces above the ground. Simultaneously, the urban use of natural resources became more and more wasteful and unsustainable. 3 The idea of the city as an 'urban metabolism' resulted from a rising awareness of natural resource scarcity and the challenges associated with this. The term 'urban metabolism', however, suffers from disciplinary fields being disconnected, while pushing their boundaries to fit the term to their particular field. 4 Instead of pushing the boundaries of separate disciplines, it would be better to find ways in which these disciplines can work in an integrated way. According to the 1956 Urban Design Conference, disciplines from which knowledge should be included in urban design should be planning, landscape architecture and engineering. 5 The Harvard Graduate School of Design's Grounding Metabolism book, 6 for example, acknowledges the influence of both environmental engineering 7 and critical approaches to urban metabolism, originating in political ecology and urban geography, 8 in the urban design discourse. The book calls for a meaningful connection to more socially, politically and ecologically viable models of urbanism. 9 Urban metabolism and sustainable urban development Urban metabolism serves as a framework for describing and analysing material and energy exchanges between cities and their environment. 10 It originates from the environmental sciences and was described in 1965 by engineer Abel Wolman in 'The Metabolism of Cities', his article on the deterioration of air and water qualities in American cities. 11 In spat...

An Overview of the Transition to a Circular Economy in Emilia-Romagna Region, Italy Considering Technological, Legal–Regulatory and Financial Points of View: A Case Study

“…In this context, as mentioned, studies related to the transition towards a CE can have different approaches, the political, the market and the territorial orientation can be considered as a lens of analysis [31,33,34]. For this paper, we used the transition in terms of market orientation in the Emilia-Romagna Region, Italy.…”

“…The authors of reference [34] analysed how the urban landscape design potentialises the social and economic dimensions based on urban metabolism, considering the case of the Belgian Central Limburg region's transition into a CE. According to this study, the areas covered by urban metabolism should be planning, landscape architecture and engineering.…”

Circular Economy Strategies in Eight Historic Port Cities: Criteria and Indicators Towards a Circular City Assessment Framework

“…Finally, the scientific literature on circular cities is varied and constantly growing. The concepts of eco-cities [48,49], (low-to-) zero carbon cities [12,50,51], zero waste cities [52], resource-efficient cities [53][54][55], regenerative cities [4,[56][57][58][59], resilient cities [60][61][62][63][64], sharing cities [65][66][67][68], and smart cities [15,[69][70][71][72][73], as well as food and food waste management in city-regions [58,[74][75][76][77], can be all linked and integrated in the broader concept of the "circular city".…”

“…At territorial level, the concept of "closed" urban metabolism is assumed as a key aspect to plan and monitor the circular city and city-region [53,58,74,75,78].…”

Resource-conscious urban planning and design : Exploring the potential of urban metabolism assessments

“…Design research that uses the act of designing as main research component, so-called 'research through designing' (Prominski, 2017), can also be a valuable means to further explore how UM quantifications can be used and integrated in the design process. The integration of UM evidence in the design process is addressed in few scientific publications so far (Galan and Perrotti, 2019;Marin and Meulder, 2018;Roggema, 2019), even though this integration requires attention. Choices regarding housing typology, garden typology and density, for example, will not just influence energy and water demand, but will also affect the local climate conditions, mobility, as well as social interaction and aspects like liveability, safety and security.…”