Atlas Noord-Brabant

The landscape of Brabant is on the eve of a major transformation. Challenges for nature, water and climate are immense and will have a huge impact on the spatial domain. The Atlas Noord-Brabant unravels the challenges, land use, qualities and characteristics of the Brabant landscape and how the national transition plays a role in this. In 80 maps, the landscape has been dissected in which more than 40 spatial challenges have been assessed in terms of their impact, timeline and opportunities to combine tasks. This resulted in five summary maps combining the qualities of Brabant with today's major transition tasks.

Brabant has a wide variety of landscapes and nature, which together could form one coherent natural system. By examining the current water and soil system in conjunction with the topsoil and subsoil, a complete picture emerges of how this system can function. In this, restoration of the natural water system will form the guiding principle for a future-proof Brabant and help shape land use in the province. The starting point here is the restoration of deep seepage streams, creating a broad seepage landscape on the Seam of Brabant (Naad van Brabant). By restoring the seepage flows, this natural landscape can contribute to cooling for new urbanization, recreational and attractive landscape parks, water security for the surrounding fertile agricultural land and enhance Brabant's biodiversity.

By systematically dissecting the landscape and clearly visualizing tasks, honest choices can be made. This makes Atlas Noord-Brabant a useful tool for various parties involved in complex processes in the province. The Atlas serves as a foundation for the spatial proposal for the province of Brabant. In several regional meetings and expert sessions, by using the Atlas, different parties gained insight into the connection between space claims and tasks that would otherwise be overlooked.

All maps shown in the workbook have been made available in the data hub of the province of Noord-Brabant. This allows municipalities, water bodies or other stakeholders to work with the most up-to-date information.

Commissioned by the Provincie of Noord-Brabant, design research, climate adaptive, transformation, city development, Flux landscape architecture, 2023