At the Nomad City settlement, we research various types of living structures. In all our settlements, we have built smaller constructions that serve as personal spaces for inhabitants, combined with a larger communal space where we share facilities such as a kitchen, shower, heating, and storage. We aim to share our remaining land with as many natural systems as possible while also using this space for our compost toilet, vegetable gardens, loam oven, solar cooker, and other sustainable household structures. The total size of our current land is approximately 1600 m² which we inhabit with 4 to 6 people.
A common question we receive is whether there's enough space for everyone to live as we do, given our land usage. For context, the average size of a Flemish single-family house is 100 m², while a multi-storey dwelling averages 64 m² (Grote Woononderzoek: zo groot zijn de Vlaamse woningen, 2013). Less than half of Belgians have a garden of 500 m² (
VILT vzw "Belgische tuin wordt steeds kleiner en diverser", 2020).
At first glance, our Nomad City project might seem to use an enormous amount of space compared to traditional housing. However, this comparison overlooks the many other ways humans occupy space. Consider where our clothing and objects come from—natural textiles like cotton, linen, or wool require land for growing and harvesting. For synthetic materials and plastics, we build oil rigs that impact both local and distant environments through pollution. Food production also significantly impacts land use—livestock occupies nearly 80% of global agricultural land while providing less than 20% of the world's calories (
How much of the world's land would we need in order to feed the global population with the average diet of a given country?, 2017). Houses require more land than just their physical location—the production of materials like wood, concrete, steel, and glass demands vast territories. We must also consider the land used for waste disposal and the time these materials take to decompose. Additionally, most Flemish gardens comprise 48% grass (Vlaco " De gemiddelde Vlaamse tuin is voor 48% met gras bedekt "2019), which offers little value to insects and wildlife.
Looking at this bigger picture reveals that land use isn't just about physical occupation—it's also about how we behave on that land. At Nomad City, we prioritize plant-based food from local CSA farms and learn to grow and process our own textiles. When we need new tools or objects, we first explore ways to produce them using local, natural, or second-hand materials. We construct buildings primarily with natural, compostable materials and eighty percent of our land supports diverse plants, vegetables, and trees, enhancing biodiversity. In the future, we plan to map our land usage more precisely to demonstrate the benefits of our way of living and show that it requires less land than people might initially assume.