Steffen Nijhuis

Delta urbanism: planning and design in urbanized deltas – comparing the Dutch delta with the Mississippi River delta

Planning and design approaches in urbanized deltas are in a process of fundamental reconsideration. For a new approach, it is fruitful to consider the urbanized delta area as a complex, layered system, based upon complex-systems theories and layer-based methods. With this theoretical point of view, we can distinguish several development periods of urbanized deltas like the Mississippi River delta and the Dutch Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta. In the current period, both deltas find themselves in a transition between the regime of the recent past and the new regime. In this transition process, the planning and design of the infrastructural system will be crucial. In order to find the most effective approach to infrastructure as a condition for urban development and water management, it will be important to develop a method of research by design, based upon strong collaboration between different disciplines such as urban design and planning, hydraulic engineering, landscape architecture, and environmental sciences.

Designing for Different Dynamics: The Search for a New Practice of Planning and Design in the Dutch Delta

The Dutch delta is an example of a complex urban landscape, the result of different processes with different time frames. Such an urban landscape can be regarded as the product of mutual relationships between natural processes and human interventions. Since the 1970s, landscape architects and urban designers have tried to conceptualize these mutual relations between different processes using a ‘layer approach ’—where substrate , infrastructures and land-use patterns are regarded as different urban layers with different speeds of change—based on the theories and methods of Braudel (La Mediterranee: La part du milieu. Colin, Paris, 1966) and McHarg (Design with Nature. Natural History Press, New York, 1969). The Dutch river and delta landscapes are an important laboratory for experimenting with new approaches which try to take into account the different dynamics of the different layers. The development of a ‘framework model,’ applied in the Dutch Room for the River program, a comprehensive spatial planning approach, is an initial attempt to create new relationships between the layers at the regional scale. It creates a balance between a clearly defined and designed framework, composed by natural elements and manmade infrastructures, and the possibility for local adaptations of urban and agricultural land use. However, as a long-term developmental strategy the framework should be adaptable to possible changes. The paper describes the attempt to develop a design approach for an adaptive framework in the Rotterdam region. Adaptive frameworks create the conditions for short-term societal changes as well as for long-term adaptation to possible changes of the natural substratum .

GIS-based Landscape Design Research: Exploring Aspects of Visibility in Landscape Architectonic Compositions

Landscape design research is important for cultivating spatial intelligence in landscape architecture. This chapter explores GIS as a tool for landscape design research—investigating landscape designs to understand them as architectonic compositions (architectonic plan analysis). Landscape architectonic compositions and their representations embody a great wealth of design knowledge as objects of our material culture and reflect the treatment of the ground, space, image and program into a characteristic coherence. By exploring landscape architectonic compositions with GIS we can acquire design knowledge that can be used in the creation/refinement of a new design. This chapter elaborates on GIS-based visibility analysis of landscape architectonic compositions and reveals the perceived spatial potential as a basis for performance and reception. Two examples of landscape design research showcase that GIS-based isovists and viewsheds have the potential of measuring visual phenomena which are often subject of intuitive and experimental design.

Exploring Spatial Relationships in the Pearl River Delta

Urban deltas belong to the most promising regions considering their population concentrations, ecosystems service and economy significance. Meanwhile these regions are facing multiple threats and are extreme vulnerable for increasing flood risk, damage of social and ecological values and substantial economic losses. These challenges are demanding a fundamental review of the planning and design of urban delta landscapes and their spatial networks, in particular in relation to environmental issues and sustainability. Systematic study of urbanized delta landscapes is essential as a basis for future-oriented action and thinking for the sustainable development of these rapidly changing landscapes. This chapter aims to introduce a multiscale approach to understand and represent urbanizing deltas as complex systems composed of subsystems, each with their own dynamics and speed of change. As a system the urbanized delta landscape is a material space that is structured as a constellation of networks and locations with multiple levels of organization at different spatial and temporal dimensions. Map-ping the peculiar form of these systems provides insight into the complexity of the built environment and the related spatial networks – and with that, understanding in important social and ecological relationships. The Pearl River Delta, one of the quickest and most densified large scale urbanizing deltas of the world, serves as a case study how mapping can be used as a powerful tool to reveal relationships be-tween landscape, networks and urbanization.