A Moveable Nexus: Framework for FEW-Design and Planning

The current state of supplying food, energy and water to urban dwellers is often top-down organised and approached in a sectoral way. This means people in cities have lost connection to what and how they get their resources supplied. The implementation of food, energy and water systems is a siloed exercise and systems operate apart from each other. The solutions are found at an ever-increasing technological complexity and scale and are not easy to understand for consumers. This makes it hardly possible for them to decide on interventions, change the supply if they would want to or take integrated action on more than one of the pillars by themselves. Finally, the approach is laced with jargon, paperwork and technical drawings, but little inspiration or design-oriented practices. This has led to an unsustainable situation of resource depletion, pollution and the passing on of problems to other places or generations. The Moveable Nexus is introduced as a way to integrate the flows of food, energy and water in a design-led way in order to overcome these systemic misfits and to develop resilient systems that are agile enough to deal with future change and uncertainty. By connecting engagement and evaluation directly to the design steps the Moveable Nexus solves problems at the lowest scale possible, supported by urban dwellers and in an inspirational way. The Nexus is moveable in the sense it allows flows to merge, scales to connect, the process to be collated and knowledge to flow freely.