Energy Habitats

Abstract

The first decades of the 21st century are defined by an expected shortage of fossil resources and an emerging climate crisis which make the transition towards renewable energy resources not only inevitable but also urgent. In the process of this transition, the Port of Rotterdam, associated with the biggest fossil fuel industry landscape in Europe, is confronted with the danger of becoming a drosscape. As the Province of Zuid Holland attempts to deal with this challenge under the umbrella of circularity, new issues regarding environmental and social justice in the whole area arise and call for a coordinated planning effort towards a just transition. This effort begins by answering how can the province use the obsolete fossil fuel infrastructure to transform the port‘s material landscapes fostering spatial justice and balancing the problematic relationship between natural and man-made systems.

Consequently, the project decodes the layers of the material, social and environmental dimensions investigating the critical issues that associate with the port‘s distinctive territories. In parallel, it defines the main concepts that can instruct this just transition arising from the fenced urban and port districts towards the whole province and combining top-down with bottom-up planning processes. As the project evolves in time, starting at the most critical territories as nodal points and involving all the different actors, it takes the form of a central green-blue spine that meets Zuid-Holland‘s energy demands while embodying a redefined symbiosis between nature and human. The result defines a new paradigm for the energy transition and the remediation of fossil fuel drosscapes that incorporates material circularity, environmental and social justice under the concept of “Energy Habitat“.