Our modern food structure is unsustainable and fragile. Changes like climate crises, rising food demand, biodiversity loss, and the technological revolution will radicalize how and what we eat and produce. Whichever changes will happen, they will have an effect on the food system. In South Holland, this will happen with the transition to a circular economy. In order to deal with the unpredictability of these changes, this report proposes to create a resilient system. The main question that will be answered is ‘How can resilient food systems contribute to a circular agri-food sector in South Holland?’. In this context, resilience is the ability to ensure the provision of system functions in the face of increasingly complex and accumulating shocks and stresses.
Through capacities of robustness, adaptability, and transformability a just transformation to the circular food economy can be ensured. The strategy Recipe for Resilience derives from this definition. Based on a network of a mix of three types of hubs, the strategy calls for a more widespread and integrated distribution of knowledge about food and the food system. These hubs are the Seeds, where knowledge and food produce germinates, the Melting Pot, common interacting ground for all actors, and the Mixers, the in-between spaces that are not transparent. Together, they supply a network facilitating producers, distributors, and consumers. Thanks to this high-functioning network of knowledge, the main goals of the strategy can be achieved.
During and after implementation, there will be high stakeholder engagement through all layers of society, local food cycles with feedback loops to distribution centers and farmers, and the knowledge about it will be widespread throughout the South Holland population. The constant exchange of expertise will ensure feedback loops throughout all layers of the knowledge production. Through this constant adaptation and transformation, a resilient system can be achieved.

The future poses a major problem of feeding 9 billion people by 2050, while the current system of agriculture in itself is unsustainable and demands resources which exceed the planetary boundaries. Further continuing this trend of exploitation and destruction of ecology will only worsen the planetary stresses the Anthropocene has established. Hence emerges the urgent necessity to reorganize and reinvent our current food system towards a sustainable and circular one to sustain life on our planet. Accordingly, the primary goal of this project is to achieve sustainability in the food sector, thereby achieving circularity and food security. The Netherlands has an extraordinary position in the global market and is globally leading in agricultural research, technology and innovation. Therefore it could prove to be fruitful to develop a regional sustainable agricultural model that could become a role model for sustainable agriculture globally. The vision is to reduce the spatial impact of our food system while discontinuing the destruction of new habitats. To achieve this, a healthy diet must be embraced, which not only proves to significantly improve our health but also facilitate a transition towards a healthier planet. By evaluating the spatial, environmental and health impacts of the current model, the negative externalities at each stage of the food sector are investigated. The diversification of the crops to be grown within South Holland is crucial in order to facilitate the transition from a food exporter to a self-sufficient region with respect to the food sector. To encourage more sustainable food production and enhance the relationship between people and their food production, it is invaluable to invest more power in the producers. Finally, the various steps involved in the food systems and the gap between people and the source of their food are reduced by initiating big food retail corporations to focus on food production. Thus, the transformation of the food industry through the integration of a sustainable agriculture model and reshaping the public’s perception of food consumption and dietary needs, will ultimately create a more healthy and balanced landscape, while aiming towards the collective goal of mitigating climate change.

To achieve a circular economy in South Holland by 2050, the construction and demolition sector must use resources efficiently, close materials loops and work with fewer emissions. Currently recycling building materials is already the approach. Yet, since this costs a lot of energy and results mostly in downcycling, it is not ideal as a long term solution to achieve a durable circular economy. Adding to this, is the space limitation within the continuous growth. The usage of the existing space and infrastructure has to be optimized. This research is answering what is the best strategy to close material loops in South Holland while reusing the existing water infrastructure, amplifying it with integrated (data) networks and improving socio-spatial justice with circular hubs. The research is being executed by analysing the most efficient waterways to use in the area, defining transformation locations according to a data-driven matrix and designing the most efficient circular hub network possible. The waterways will connect circular hubs on 3 scales, a regional processing hub, a city storage & purchase hub and a flexible last mile hub. Transporting materials and goods in between the circular hubs helps in reducing CO2 emission and it can substantiate traffic on the roads. This leads to less busy highways, safer city centres and efficient use of transport. All the logistic flows and used-material flows come together in the Virtual realm, where all used-material data is accessible and a twin-region is ensuring spatial justice. Therefore the concept of Virtual X Water is the answer to define the transition towards a circular economy in 2050.

New Geographies 06: Grounding Metabolism aims to trace alternative, synthetic routes to design through a more elaborate understanding of the relation between models and concepts of urban metabolism and the formal, physical, and material engraving of metabolic processes across scales. The design disciplines have always recognized the potential within a critical understanding of urban metabolism to shape spatial strategies, from Patrick Geddes’s Valley Section to the megastructures of the Japanese Metabolists. Confined to the regional scale historically, today’s generalized urbanization is characterized by an unprecedented complexity and planetary upscaling of metabolic relations. Most contemporary discussions of metabolism have failed to integrate formal, spatial, and material attributes. Technoscientific approaches have been limited to a performative interpretation of flows, while more theoretical attempts to interrogate the sociopolitical embeddedness of metabolic processes have largely ignored their formal spatial registration. Within this context, the design disciplines—fascinated by the fluidity of metabolic processes—have privileged notions of elasticity without regard for the often sclerotic quality of landscapes and infrastructures. The issue addresses the challenges associated with the planetary dimension of contemporary metabolic processes, offers a critical examination of the long lineage of historical discussions and schemes on urban metabolism from the design disciplines and places them in parallel with a set of contemporary projects and interventions that open up new approaches for design.@en