Living Landscapes: Regenerating Cities, Land and Self

Description

Living Landscapes is a place-based experiential program that takes the territory as its curriculum, exploring ways to overcome the socio-ecological challenges of our time from a grounded, personal, real-world and transdisciplinary approach. You will set up a living community on an Urban Farm at the edge of the city of Amsterdam, connecting landscape and urban life. 

Leaning from the very human and natural dynamics that vitalise or deteriorate a place, it is an immersive learning journey, embedded in local communities. Together with local stakeholders, you will give a voice to the landscape and contribute to maintaining, restoring, and regenerating the community, local economy, and natural environment.

Learn regenerative approaches to the development of place, society and self by working with and from the (bio)region west of Amsterdam and take part in community life at an urban farm estate. You will work with pioneers in this emerging field, locales, practitioners and academics, get to know the deeper underpinnings of regenerative practice, and are invited to hands on participation in the territory. 

The program provides insights into the principles and frameworks of regenerative regional development. You will explore different approaches and learn the underlying theories. In addition, you will quickly build a community and create your own unique learning journey by experiencing how a territory works. At the end of the summer school, you will share your learnings, achievements, or experiences in a final public exhibition.

• Throughout the program, you will conduct your own research. Whether you pursue a philosophical or artistic project, the program offers a rich environment full of opportunities.
• You will define your own questions and seek the answers together. The program leader will help you find the right sources and inspiration. Your findings will contribute to a bottom-up, multi-stakeholder regeneration process involving governments, local farmers, businesses, artists, and civil society.

Regeneration is quickly becoming a trend in farming, finance, ecology, urban development, spiritual ecology and social change. For places and living (eco)systems to thrive they need the capacity to regenerate, adapt to change, and be alive in the broadest sense of the word. But how do we ‘do’ regeneration at the scale of landscapes, place, ourselves, communities and systems? This course takes 'place' as the starting point of inquiry, reflection and practice. Its unique character, nature, dynamics and patterns as well as its stories, communities and potential. At once practical and philosophical, hands-on and deepening as the landscapes we inhabit mirror the inner landscapes from which we shape them.

How would we develop our cities and countryside such that they support all life? That question guides our action research in the ecological corridor of the Amsterdam Wester Scheg that bridges urban life and countryside between Amsterdam and the North Sea. It is home to some of the lowest polders in the Netherlands, has the largest diversity of species and cultures, and has the last fertile soil of the city. Many of the great challenges of society come together in this territory. The food transition, land enclosure, climate adaptation, struggling disadvantaged communities, to name but a few. Meanwhile the city densifies, data- and distributions centres sprawl through the land, and families and farmers are trying to find ways to make ends meet.

Building local capacity for renewal and vitality go hand in hand with the need to navigate the increasing pressures of the global market, climate change, or social inequality. What practices do we have at our disposal to navigate these pressures and develop life affirming interventions? How do we make sense of place in its different dynamics so it can be a home for all? What is our own role and place in such complex and large challenges?

We will be weaving connections between stakeholders, deepening our understanding of place, and strengthening our community & personal leadership.

This programme is offered by the Utrecht Honours College, EWUU Alliance between Utrecht University, Wagening University, Technical University Eindhoven, and the Academy of Place.

Co-development

• You are invited to take a role in leading certain activities in the course. As a community of practice we share the space of learning, and this participatory form of learning creates immediate experience in the work of regenerative practice. Working in community allows the programme to embody principles and practices that are essential in Regenerative Development.

Experience-Based Learning

• Our approach is rooted in hands-on, place and project-based learning. We will work on places, projects and initiatives brought in by you, the participants, allowing for an integration of theory and practice that resonates with your reality. This approach also creates a rich learning environment where insights from diverse projects illuminate universal principles of regenerative development.

Why Should You Attend?

• The Regenerative City offers an opportunity to contribute to the creation of more resilient, sustainable, and vibrant regions and communities. This course not only offers the chance to network and collaborate with like-minded students and professionals but also provides valuable resources and tools to aid in your professional journey.

Lecturers

Dr. Thieu Besselink

Thieu Besselink is a lecturer and practitioner of regenerative development. 

Thieu Besselink is an urbanist, educator, and practical philosopher with a thoroughly interdisciplinary background. He has always worked on the crossroads between academia and practice in regenerative development. After his PhD with prof. Richard Sennett at the London School of Economics, and European University Institute he founded the Townmaking Institute (R&D for urban commons) and Academy of Place to develop approaches to bioregional regeneration and transformative learning. He works intensively with governments, farmers, financial institutions, cities, companies, scientist and artists to find common stewardship and build regenerative capacity for larger landscape.  

Selected faculty will consist of experts and pioneering practitioners in the field of landscape regeneration, urban development, commoning, ecology, governance and economy, film and story-telling, urban farming, food transition, and more.

 

Target audience

The course will be valuable for students and practitioners, and we invite various levels of study as we use mainly experiential learning and frameworks that allow for both introductory and advanced work. It is a pre to have affinity with place-based development practices, agroecology, or sustainability in landscapes, communities, and cities, but the course transcends disciplines and invites other backgrounds as well.

• Advanced bachelors
• Master students
• PhD
• Postdoc
• Practitioners

Aim of the course

Objectives

• Know what makes a place or region flourish and where to start;
• Have greater awareness of the relationship between our inner landscape and the landscapes in which we live.
• Have a foundational understanding of frameworks and approaches to regenerative development;
• Know how to identify the right scale for intervention and regeneration (site, community, place, (bio)region);
• Have a range of ways to understand a place and what it needs.
• Ways how to understand the complex social, economic, ecological and cultural dynamics of place as a whole
• Know how to leverage the assets of place for its regeneration
• Have developed practices for personal and community leadership in regenerative work
• Learn to navigate the tensions caused by the large societal challenges and transitions (in energy, food, water, inequality, ecology etc), both in our own lives and in the unique context of a place
• Have worked with experienced (bio)regional regeneration practitioners;
• Have learned from the experience of a cooperative science, art, and urban farming community and its regional stakeholders in the Amsterdam polders;
• Have become part of a living community of practice.

Study load

Fulltime including some of the evenings. 3.5 ec

Preparatory reading, two online sessions, and assignment  approx. 0.5 ec

 

Tags

• Sustainability
• Urban Farming
• Community
• Place Based Development
• Bioregion Regeneration
• leadership
• Participatory Development
• social innovation