With the rise of climate-conscious design and design justice, how to justify a greenfield city?
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Can we plan an adaptive city with a sensitive reflex system?
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Archaeologically, cities were made near abundant resources, or migration routes. Can cities stretch easily to accommodate residents needs?
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Would semi-nomadic cities manage resources differently? Would it help address concerns of resource management in a climate-conscious age?
DELTA
A linear littoral city stretched along the coast.
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Linearity: The coast acts as a responsive terrain to the refugees landing on the shore while deterring concrete construction, using materials that allow rapid assembly and disassembly.
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Littoral:
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Preserving the natural landscape and periphery farmlands that sustain the city.
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Creating an area that refuses to widen easily to prevent stagnation and slumification.
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Creating a zone of mobility in order to monitor, document and help efficiently.
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City, not camp: Residents are the volunteers that run the refugee processing system, the refugees themselves, and the locals that help settle the refugees through employment generation, cultural and linguistic sensitisation, providing familiar bubbles of connectivity.
The City
The width of the city spans around three to five kilometres inland, but the length, which can stretch as far along the coast as needed, can be accessed through the connecting railway or metro line. The rail divides the two functions of the Delta City: the onboarding of refugees on the Dockside with the hospitals, docks and shipyards; and the residence, agrarian, culture-commercial hub on the inland side, called Inverse.
Dockside
The grey left arm is the Delta’s naval arsenal that funnels scattered and adrift people into the Onboarding Centres where emergency medical care is provided and identification registration begins. The Dockside contains some secondary sectors such as shipbuilding, metalworking and smelting, chemical and engineering industries, aerospace manufacturing and heavy construction.
Inverse
Inverse is the spine of the Delta City; where people stay.
​The linear model of the city has several advantages, such as preventing unorganised clustering, and allowing the city and its facilities to stretch along the coast, further bringing better infrastructure for refugee rescue over a wider area along the coast. It also prevents excess strain on the water and land to provide for a growing population, and gives the residents a framework to feel more grounded by being surrounded by nature in four of the six directions.
The residences are all constructed on wooden elevated platforms, including the walkway that connects residents. The stilt house has numerous advantages:
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The land can be selectively used to farm.
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The city enjoys looking down at untampered vegetation.
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Residences need to be fortified for floods, requiring intensive investment but also makes the city climate resilient.
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The stilts act as a deterrent for installing bore-wells as the entire network of pipes will be clear to see.
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The walkways connecting the residences only allow for light vehicles such as trams, rickshaws and bicycles.
Inverse Centres
Other than the Dockside and the residences, everything else is placed in the Inverse Centres that look like they are strung up on the Inverse spine like pearls on string. They dot the landscape where heavier construction is possible, on higher or dryer land, and are between half to one square kilometer in area. They contain the markets, schools, offices, theatres: the sectors.
Proposal Risks and Mitigation
Social
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​​Given the sensitivity of the target group to hierarchies due to displacement, pressure to assimilate, and the perceived insatiability of a temporary residence, there are several mechanisms to make the at-risk demographic more socially secure. These include participatory planning mechanisms, establishing cultural mediation councils, and using cooperative housing models to manage shared agency and tenure security.
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Environmental
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The infrastructure of creating foundations and supports for the stilt-city can disrupt coastal ecosystems or wetlands, especially if scaled. Additionally, rising sea levels and extreme weather events could overwhelm planned resilience measures. Conducting comprehensive environmental impact assessments prior to construction and adding adaptive flood buffers such as floating wetlands, mangrove rehabilitation and retractable platforms can contribute to sustainable resilience. ​
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Infrastructure
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​The linear layout of the city may strain service and utilities distribution, and impede vertical density or long term scalability. While the goal is to prevent uncontrolled lateral growth and unbalanced density increase, in order to have the capacity for random population influx, there should eb a plan for progressive densification, allowing parts of the city to evolve from temporary to semi-permanent forms over time.
Material and maintenance demands of the elevated structures can invite opportunities to use biophilic and regenerative design materials to minimise carbon footprint.
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Financial Vulnerability and Governance
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This model requires high financial investment and dependency on external aid, as it would possibly be a multinational operation. This brings ambiguity in land ownership and jurisdiction. Framing the project under international urban humanitarian framework such as UN-Habitat or UN International Organisation for Migration or even regional coalitions. Developing micro-economies and local enterprises in the Inverse Centres to ensure gradual-reliance can help the longevity of the project.