Onderstaand artikel is overgenomen van de
Harvard Gazette
By the end of this century, sea levels in the Netherlands may
rise more than 4 feet, a troubling prospect in a country where 70
percent of GNP is produced in protected areas that are below sea
level.
To cope with the prospect of fast-rising water, two schools of
thought have evolved in the nation of vulnerable delta cities: Use
engineering know-how to build up dikes and improve pumping
technology, or open cities to the sea in such a way that natural
systems can co-exist with human habitation.
The second course - call it a "proto-ecological intervention" -
is where Harvard comes in. Over the past two years, students at the
Graduate School of Design (GSD) have puzzled over what they call
the country's "climate conundrum" in a project funded by the
Netherlands.
In a daylong series of studio presentations at Gund Hall on
Monday (May 3), the 14 students from the departments of Landscape
Architecture and Urban Planning and Design presented their capstone
ideas to Dutch officials. Some watched on a trans-Atlantic video
link. Others were in low-slung Room B-04, where the four walls were
lined with massive poster boards on wheels.
Een superdijk voor Dordrecht
The students, part of a research project led by GSD professors
Pierre Belanger and Nina-Marie Lister, focused on Dordrecht, the
oldest city in Holland. The historic market city, which is bounded
by five rivers, is at risk from more than rising sea levels. It
faces sea surges from the west, river flooding from the east, and
dramatic subsidence in "polders," the tracts of land captive within
dikes.
One idea already afloat in the Netherlands is to seal Dordrecht
behind a kind of super-dike. That would be the culmination of the
world-class civil engineering that the Dutch have practiced for
more than 500 years. (Per capita, Dutch expenditures on flood
defense - 2 billion Euros a year - match U.S. military
spending.)
Leven met water
But other Dutch officials are drawn to going beyond traditional
dikes and pumps. Closing the city off from any influence of the
rivers or the sea is a bad idea, said Ellen Kelder, Dordrecht's
water manager, who attended the presentations along with city
planner Judit Bax.
Bring in ecology, she said, echoing some of the Harvard
presenters. It's important to make the seacoast city a kind of
plastic entity that will flex with natural rhythms instead of
defying them.
The city was part of a Dutch "delta commission" formed after
catastrophic seacoast flooding in 1953, said Bax. Last year, a new
delta commission was formed to look ahead to 2100. One idea
proposed, she said, would be to open up that closed system to the
forces of nature, including tides, flood surges, and rising water
levels. The basic idea is simple, said Kelder: "living with water."
Bring in the issue of energy, she added. After all, Holland's
present flood control structures and pumping systems require almost
100,000 barrels of foreign oil a day, and fossil fuels are
finite.
Ruim baan voor de rivier
Dordrecht is one of 40 Dutch cities that are questioning the
primacy of engineering-only solutions for what they call "flood
defense." By 2015, each city will develop a strategic plan in the
national project called "Room for the River."
Dordrecht also helped form "Drecht cities," a consortium of
riverside towns looking at regional solutions to flooding.The city
has teamed with Spanish venture capitalists on the Urban Flood
Management Project, part of a bid to be in the forefront of a
global conversation on how cities will cope with climate
change.
Nieuw waterparadigma
But Kelder still fears that any water safety discussion in
Holland will stay focused only on engineering solutions. Instead,
she said, "We are looking for a paradigm shift." The GSD students
had the same game-shifting notion. Their projects looked at a
future Dordrecht region. It could be a place where algae are farmed
for energy, and where fertilizer-intensive dry-land agriculture
gives way to farming mollusks.
It could be "depopulated" as residents are drawn to
flood-resilient housing outside the dikes and existing streets
alternately become public spaces and flood-control
mechanisms. Why shouldn't there be fewer people in the city,
asked one presentation. After all, in sprawling Dordrecht, 60
percent of the land mass employs only 1 percent of its citizens. Or
the future Dordrecht could be a place of "gradient urbanism," where
dikes are expanded to become places to live. Or it could be a place
of "climate capitalism," where the adaptation to sea level rise is
the engine for new industries.
"Depoldering Dordrecht" brochure
One project noted that by the middle of this century, two-thirds
of the world's population will live in flood-prone delta regions. A
future Dordrecht that relied on "ecological interventions" to
supplement engineering solutions could become a coastal urban
template for the world.
Bax, the city planner, liked the sweep of the Harvard
presentations, and that they were created by "people from another
continent, with a fresh view." To summarize and illustrate
their complex projects, the students designed and printed a
"Depoldering Dordrecht" brochure, complete with faux ads that
anticipate a future in commercial concert with the sea. There were
ads for estuary-cultivated pearls, "one-stop shopping" for oysters
and other bivalves, and a bumper sticker that read: "We [Heart]
Floods."
Of all the ads, said Belanger, "The one for Prada hip boots is
my favorite." But what can Harvard possibly bring to the
Dutch, who have so expertly been holding back the sea for
centuries?
Eeuwig pompen
"A fresh look," said Tracy Metz, a Dutch urbanist, architecture
writer, and critic who originated the idea of a Harvard-Holland
partnership. She was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard from 2006 to 2007.
"The Dutch will always have to pump," but you can't only pump, said
Metz, especially since many of the hard-engineering solutions of
recent decades have come with a steep ecological price. "We want to
find new ways of living with water and living with nature."
The Harvard project might help, said Kelder, calling it a
collection of ideas that are smart, innovative, and "beautifully
presented." But the next step has to be translating these ideas
into something that politicians, businessmen, and citizens will
understand. "Everyone has to see the benefits. Then we will go
there," said Kelder.
Next stop: Rotterdam
Meanwhile, ideas should be supplemented with a pilot project
that interrupts the engineering-only dialogue. "It's very important
to break up the discussion," she said, sitting near the bright
student posters. "And you don't break up a discussion with just
this." Metz said the Harvard-Holland project could go into a third
year, though discussions are continuing. If it did, GSD students
and faculty would deal with issues in Rotterdam, the largest Dutch
port.
As for Dordrecht, said Kelder: Two years is a start for a
university-government collaboration, but 10 or 20 years makes more
sense. "It's brilliant what they've done," she said of the GSD
students. "Now we need to do something with it."
The May 4 presentations were sponsored by the
Harvard-Netherlands Project on Climate Change, Water, Land
Development, and Adaptation, in association with the Netherlands
Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management; the
Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment;
and the Netherlands-based Deltares Institute. Participating
graduate students - who spend a week in Dordrecht in March - were
Casey Elmer, Jianhang Gao, Kimberly Garza, Julia Grinkrug, Eamonn
Hutton, Haein Lee, Jae Yoon Lee, James Moore, Abhishek Sharma,
Soomin Shin, Richa Shukla, Gyoung Tak Park, Sarah Thomas, and Laci
Videmsky.