Urban Planning

Research in Flanders Thematic Paper

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Thematic papers

The goal of the thematic papers is to present Flemish scientific research internationally. They focus on fundamental and applied research.

The thematic papers are published by Research in Flanders, a project run by Flanders Knowledge Area.

The project Research in Flanders is funded by the Flemish Government, Department of Foreign Affairs.

Flanders Knowledge Area supports, through different projects, the internationalization of higher education in Flanders, Belgium.

www.researchinflanders.be www.flandersknowledgearea.be

Jens Aerts, guest professor at the Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and partner in design agency BUUR

Luuk Boelens, director of the Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning (the Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning) at the faculty of Engineering and Architecture at Ghent University

Klaas Claeyssens, Department of Real Estate - Land and Property Surveying at University College Ghent

Tom Coppens, president of the research group for Urban Development at University of Antwerp

Guy Engelen, project manager of the Unit Environmental Modelling at VITO (Flemish Institute for Technological Research)

Michael Ryckewaert, professor at the Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the unit Architecture and Design at the Department of Architecture, KU Leuven

For this thematic paper we talked to:

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A city is part of the landscape. It has its own history, grows and blossoms in synergy with its surroundings. In the past, political, military or local decision makers determined what cities would look like. This is no longer the case these days. Societal challenges have become too great. The voices from those on the ground are crucial when developing zoning plans for neighbourhoods, towns, cities or regions, however visionary or appealing they may be at first sight. That means it is necessary to listen to these voices. What is going on in an area, city or region? What needs do its inhabitants and other parties have? What criteria, trends and challenges have to be taken into account?

Developing spaces in cities and the surrounding countryside is more than ever a question of management. Management of often very complex processes. Certainly for Flanders and its cities, because the region is one of the most densely populated, traffic-intensive and urbanised areas in the world. The cross-pollination between city and countryside is the canvas that forms the backdrop for Flemish researchers, (urban) planners and developers to shape developments and the planning of urban space in Flanders.

Flemish knowledge and expertise in urban development and planning is distributed across a wide range of bodies: the knowledge centres of the Flemish universities and university colleges, the knowledge centre Vlaamse Steden/Thuis in de Stad (Flemish Cities/At Home in the City), the planning departments and administrations for urban planning in cities and municipalities, the Territorial Development Agency of the Brussels Capital Region and private firms for (city) urbanisation and town planning.

Urban Planning Cross-pollination between town and countryside

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Flanders Delta

© NASA

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In many ways, Flanders is a bizarre habitat. A 13,682.38-km² piece of land, part of the large Scheldt, Meuse and Rhine river delta. One great diamond-shaped area of light stretching from the Randstad (the Netherlands) over the Ruhr valley (Germany) to Flanders marks the delta by night on NASA satellite photos. Everything goes dark from Groningen in the north, Lille in the south and Dortmund in the east. The area is strewn with cities and villages.

Zooming in, we also see villages and hamlets, meadowland, agricultural land, orchards, woodland, natural areas and industrial estates next to and amongst the large cities and small towns. All of it intertwined with a myriad of roads, streams and rivers, motorways and railways. Airports like pimples close to the big cities. A landscape characterised by sustainable and diversified economic activity with 30 million people living inside those contours. Flanders lies smack-bang in the middle of it. How to describe such an area? Is it urban space like Mexico City, New York, Manila or Shanghai with a population of 20 to 25 million? Is it a jagged natural area divided into building plots? Or something in between?

NASA satellite photos offer an interesting perspective. Aerial

photos from twenty to thirty years ago clearly show the enormous evolution the area has undergone in the last decades and is still undergoing as we speak, together with the people who live and work in it.

Flanders as horizontal metropolis

Researching development processes and dynamics in deltas like the Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt river ones, is one of Luuk Boelens’ hobby horses. For the last two years, Boelens has been the director of the Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning at Ghent University, a multidisciplinary and internationally oriented research group within the Engineering and Architecture faculty.

Boelens consciously breaks through the distinction between city and countryside when he talks about urban development and planning in Flanders. ‘Because,’ so he says, ‘today, all these different uses within the delta that Flanders lies in, have been integrated into one great metropolitan area of urban, peri-urban and rural elements that strongly complement and (potentially) strengthen each other. That’s a typical pattern in river deltas across the world. There’s no centrally orchestrated space, like there is in Paris, Moscow, London or New York, but there is no nature anymore either. It’s cultured nature, the

landscape has been urbanised. And a, what I call, horizontal metropolis lives and grows in that landscape’.

By horizontal, Boelens does not mean there should or can be no vertical office buildings or tower blocks in city or town centres, but ‘horizontal’ because everyone negotiates and makes agreements with one another within a very strong synergy between city and countryside. And that has been the case for centuries. At the same time, there is a degree of friendly competition between all these parties: they compete with each other whenever possible and work together whenever necessary. ‘That’s why the region used to be and still is so extremely innovative, flexible and competitive, just like other metropolitan deltas. And it’ll probably carry on that way in the future too,’ emphasises Boelens.

Seven challenges for society

Luuk Boelens sees seven great social challenges for this horizontal metropolis and its countryside, which Flanders will have to tackle in the coming decades:

1. climate change: everything to do with flooding, draughts, urban heat islands, changes to fauna and flora, etc.;

2. energy transition: spatial evolution and developments in terms of process management

© NASA

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in the area of sustainable energy supply independent from fossil fuels, including all shifts in economic power blocks on the world scene;

3. food production: more short supply chain products and urban farming than food im-ported from all across the world;

4. ageing: current health care facilities do no longer meet the exponential growth of an ageing population;

5. sustainable and synchro-modal transport: transport infrastructure in the Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt river delta does not have to be extended, but used in a different and better way - this means managing it differently as well;

6. objective/subjective health: the relationship between planning and health and liveability in urban areas has to be radically rethought;

7. participative management: no centrally controlled management of space, but management oriented towards participation in all layers of society.

All research into urban planning and development will have to take these challenges into account, according

to Luuk Boelens. Against this backdrop, the Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning develops practical contributions to research that is relevant to policies. Attention to urban planning, space and mobility is crucial. At the moment there are three projects up to speed.

• Living labs

A first research project is the living labs. These are strategic collaborations that research how the flexibility and coping ability of local companies, inhabitants and councils in a particular area can be improved when faced with changes in the climate, growth of the population, numbers of immigrants, daily commutes or other variables. Living labs make it possible to test urban planning strategies and shape urban environments in a more sustainable way. At the moment the Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning is running two living labs in the provinces of Antwerp, East Flanders and Flemish Brabant together with KU Leuven and the University of Antwerp.

• Heat islands

A second research project of the Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning are heat islands in cities. Boelens explains: ‘We completed a study recently for the city of Ghent. During the summer of 2012,

VITO researchers measured the temperature in squares and streets in and around Ghent. It emerged that at night, air temperatures were about 3 degrees higher and surface temperatures 10 to 15 degrees higher than in other towns in the vicinity like Lochristi and Eeklo. Researchers from the Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning then analysed these results and compared them to health data. They noticed that these urban heat islands actually affect vulnerable groups like the elderly, children, the disabled and even immigrants in a problematic way. We can work out strategies to deal with these, based on these results’.

• Synchromobility

Synchromobility is a new research area the Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning is focusing on. The challenge is to manage existing mobility networks in different ways. the Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning is researching synchromobility in Flanders over a period of two years on behalf of the Flemish Strategic Research Centre for Logistics and Mobility (SOC LoMo). Boelens explains: ‘We want to gain an insight into people’s mobility styles. Their daily commute. How do fathers, mothers, young people and employees go to different places during the day, at weekends or on holiday? Where do

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‘Research into urban planning and development

has to take societal challenges into account’

they go? What routes do they take?’ Boelens continues: ‘We have already accumulated an enormous database with a vast amount of empiric data and we want to link this to other information, functional and spatial patterns. Then we can extract spatial mobility patterns and work out strategies based on these. And we want to do it for Flanders as a whole’.

More information

Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning (AMRP):

http://planning.ugent.be/en/

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How liveable is our horizontal metropolis?

© VITO NV

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Is a provincial town like Mechelen a town in its own right or is it an integral part of the Antwerp-Brussels metropolitan axis? Looking at satellite images of Flanders, it seems one great big synergetic city. What will this synergy look like in 40 years? How does a city grow as an autonomous body? A city’s dynamics and growth are not really acted out inside the city these days, but mainly outside of it.

Urban growth scenarios

The synergy of city and countryside is a privileged research domain for the Unit Environmental Modelling at VITO (the Flemish Institute for Technological Research). ‘This synergy is very significant,’ stresses Guy Engelen who is responsible for the project. Together with his team of 12 strong, he uses mathematical models to map out this synergy. One of these is the so-called RuimteModel Vlaanderen which he uses to try and predict how spaces amongst and around cities will continue to evolve. The cellular automata theory forms the basis for these models. Engelen maps out the dynamics of areas by zooming in on land areas or cells with a resolution of 1 hectare. To research air quality in a particular area, for example, or potential ground water pollution or the risk of flooding as a result of dynamics in land use, he enters the

right indicators and necessary data that reflect the current situation into the models. Mathematical formulas then allow the models to calculate a situation for next year, using this year’s. By applying these same formulas repeatedly, the models spontaneously generate growth patterns reflecting evolution processes for the area in the future, for example for the next 30 to 40 years.

Looking at living space under a magnifying glass

Engelen explains: ‘What are the functions the available space would best be used for in the future? That’s the million dollar question. Our models take into account about 37 different kinds of uses in Flanders. Twelve of those are oriented towards socio-economic activities: residential areas and the industrial, tertiary and quaternary sectors. We calculate evolving population and employment densities for each of these. How many people live and work in the area we research at the moment and certainly how many will do so in the future? We also look at urbanisation density. How will Flemish cities develop if the government were to decide not to use extra space for urban functions from 2020? This means an increase in population density and more efficient use of available

space, not only in cities, but also in the countryside. We will probably need to start living more closely together. The great question is where, in which densities, to what extent accessible to other functions and mixed with them?’

Engelen continues: ‘Another indicator is housing. What spaces are built up and which are not? Are they all linked together or are there some open spaces amongst them? Are the open spaces natural as well as agricultural land? This indicator is rather focused on nature managers and farmers. We can include suitable indicators in the model when someone wants to get an image of one particular aspect of an area’.

Engelen uses his models to support administrative bodies such as Ruimte Vlaanderen (Flemish government) or the urban plan-ning departments of cities and provinces. The Belgian province of Limburg, for example, engaged Engelen’s team to go in search of suitable space for extra regional industrial estates in urban areas and specific economic nodes in the province. For the Agentschap voor Natuur en Bos (Flemish Nature and Forestry Agency) of the Flemish government, the team researched how different habitat types can be integrated into Flanders’ protected

© VITO NV

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natural areas. The researchers take into account the EU’s strict prerequisites, but also the needs and wishes from stakeholders such as farmers, land owners, companies, nature managers and other parties using these spaces.

Scenarios for the future

All of this gives us an image of how Flanders is developing, based on known or potential trends and the region’s existing or alternative policies. But the team at VITO also looks on a much broader level and calculates future scenarios, just in case Flanders were forced to develop in a different societal context. The team has been engaged in the preparation of the new Ruimte voor Ruimte Vlaanderen policy which translates as Space for Space. How does Flanders see its future? Will we follow the American trend where private initiatives will determine planning policy much more than the government? Will we find ourselves in a globalised world scenario or will we evolve towards spaces planned in a rather regionalised way? What is the role and reach of centrally controlled policies in each of these situations?

Engelen explains: ‘We also calculated a scenario where the EU controlled part of urban planning, just like it does for the environment now. What would these possible social trends mean for the way Flanders will deal with the environment, energy, mobility and population developments? With our mathematical models and scenarios, we give policy makers an image of the effect policies will

have in the future. And they are valuable instruments for designers and town planners too, because they are obliged to look at cities and urbanisation as part of an integrated system. If a planner sets up a project in a city today, it’ll also have consequences for its outskirts and outlying areas and vice versa. A city is one part of a much larger whole and that’s often underestimated’.

More information

VITO, Unit Environmental Modelling: https://vito.be/en/land-use/land-use

© VITO NV

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Urban governance: a discipline in its own right

© VITO NV

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According to Tom Coppens, president of the research group for Urban Development at the University of Antwerp, there are two distinct directions in the vast domain of city development and urban planning. Coppens explains: ‘It’s a duality unique to all course programmes in this domain. Urban development is closely related to architecture, but urban planning is very closely related to the social and political sciences. Planners investigate all kinds of aspects and phenomena connected to urban planning and they publish articles about them in journals that also publish research by geographers and sociologists’.

Managing complex urban projects

A new niche has been asserting itself in between city development and urban planning: urban governance, the art of managing complex projects in urban areas. Urban governance has grown into a separate professional discipline altogether.

What is it about exactly? ‘Well,’ explains Tom Coppens, ‘most developers know how to get financing for one building, but things become much more complex when it comes to projects involving entire streets, new neighbourhoods, parks, residential zones and public facilities. The redevelopment of

the Heizel, Reyers and canal zone sites in Brussels or the Spoor Noord park and the quays in Antwerp are grand projects that take a long time to complete. And they are very complex in terms of financing, most often also crossing municipal boundaries. This means they involve many parties from the public and private sphere. And there are various levels of governance that have to be taken into account as well: local councils, city councils, the province, Flanders itself, often the EU too’.

The great challenge is to find a consensus amongst all these parties, preferably in a structured way. And this does not always go smoothly. Complex projects like these often last longer than planned. Why is that and what can be done to avoid it? To answer this question, Tom Coppens and his team recently analysed allotted times for a total of 1,300 projects. Coppens explains: ‘Our research showed that lack of consensus is the most important factor for delays’.

Coppens’ research team also analysed what the effect of participation from locals was on decision making and the time it took to complete the projects. For his PhD Coppens analysed the effect of action committees on large projects. To do its research, the team

applies methods and theoretical models used in sociology, political and management sciences: surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups and statistical analysis.

The complex projects decree

Flemish researchers, town and urban planners have already gathered a lot of knowledge in managing complex urban projects through trial and error. The Flemish government has now also lent a hand: on 23 April 2014, the Flemish parliament adopted the Decree concerning Complex Projects (Decreet betreffende complexe projecten). It was the direct result of the deadlock which a number of large urban projects in Flanders had reached. The decree offers a new approach, precisely to avoid delays and endless discussion. From now on, it is mandatory for the local population, users, employees, interest groups, advisory and governmental bodies to thoroughly consult each other in advance.

The Oosterweel Link in Antwerp is exemplary of this process. A bridge across the Scheldt river to relieve the Antwerp ring road and provide a solution to the city’s huge traffic problems. The project received the necessary attention on a European and international level, but has now become a protracted symbolic

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matter for the city. Why? Coppens explains: ‘From the beginning, the Oosterweel Link was only looked at from the perspective of Antwerp’s congestion problem. This one-sided approach caused a lot of resistance amongst locals, because it’s also and mainly about the impact of road infrastructure on quality of life in the city. The project didn’t take that into account in its starting phase. People are now working on adjustments and alternatives under pressure from a number of committed stakeholders. And this means years of delay’.

Brussels, a chapter in its own right

• From neighbourhood contracts ...

Not only large-scale projects benefit from strong support amongst the local community. ‘Taking the pulse of what’s happening in a particular neighbourhood, town or city also forms the basis for every small-scale town development project,’ says Jens Aerts, affiliated to Cosmopolis (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and partner in BUUR design agency. ‘Monitoring is well-known ground for geographers and sociologists. They research the capacities of neighbourhoods, their users and inhabitants. They analyse all kinds of indicators, such as social make-up and education levels of

the local population, economic activity, clubs, percentages of social housing, unoccupied properties, infrastructure, presence of schools, green areas, companies, etc. Using these statistics, we can see which neighbourhoods have negative or weaker factors and which of those the government can invest in’.

To revalue vulnerable areas in Brussels, the Brussels Capital Region launched the so-called neighbourhood contract as its most important tool. These contracts are executed in partnership with the municipalities and concern

housing (through public bodies or in collaboration with the private sector), public spaces, infrastructure and facilities in the neighbourhood, as well as economic and social initiatives. Brussels has been launching four

of these neighbourhood contracts every year since 1999. At the start of 2010, neighbourhood contracts were converted into sustainable neighbourhood contracts, with greater emphasis on sustainable development and participation from the local population.

Jens Aerts considers this a logical evolution: ‘In the past, the emphasis used to be on master planning with large morphological and typological surveys or the small-scale development of empty plots of land. Now, the emphasis is rather on engaging the local population, clubs

and other parties in the transition process, and creating alliances to define programmes and the design agenda against this backdrop’.

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• ... to territorial development

People driving or riding through Brussels these days won’t be able to ignore it: Belgium’s capital is going through a real revival. After 15 years’ experience with neighbourhood contracts, it’s time to move up a gear. The Brussels Capital Region created the Territorial Development Agency (ATO) especially to help guide the city’s large projects. A multidisciplinary team of architects, planners, legal professionals, geo-graphers and economists provides guidance for some ten large projects. Think of the Tour & Taxi site, the redesigning of the Wetstraat/Rue de la Loi (awarded to French architect and urban planner Christian de Portzamparc). Or the entire area around the South Station. A master plan was finally put together recently to redesign the canal zone.

The Reyers site with its future Media city is a project that has attracted lots of interest - also from abroad. It is a strategic spot stretching across the territories of three municipalities around the capital. ATO appointed an international team to shape the area in a practical way. French architecture and town planning firm François Leclercq has taken the lead over the team under supervision from ATO. The firm made a name for itself working on important projects such as Paris Nord-Est, Euro-Méditerranée in Marseille and Le Bois Habité in Lille. The site will house, amongst others, the new headquarters of the two Belgian public broadcasters VRT and RTBF (with a total surface area of 90,000 m²), 250,000 m² of housing and all the infrastructure needed for this new area of the city. And there is also space for a great regional park, the Reyers park.

More information

Research Group for Urban Development, University of Antwerp:

https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/rg/research-group-urban-

development/about-us/mission/

Cosmopolis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel:

http://www.cosmopolis.be/

BUUR:

http://www.buur.be/buur_eng

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From idea to practical executionThe crucial role of developers

© BUUR

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Developers are the third major link in the chain of renewal and development projects in cities, next to town developers and urban planners. ‘But as long as they can’t apply them to specific projects, developers can’t use theoretical publications based on science, sociological or mathematical models or surveys about quality of housing and life and social networks. If the practical key to the development story is missing, they can’t do anything with all that information,’ explains Klaas Claeyssens from the Department of Real Estate - Land and Property Surveying at University College Ghent. ‘When developers are offered a piece of land, they want to design a profitable project for it that provides added value for the city’s fabric. They want to know what demand there is, what they can build and how much it will cost. There’s a great gap in communication between the macro world of the town developers and urban planners and the micro world of developers. And we want to close it’.

Developers use discounted cash flows to calculate the feasibility of construction and renovation projects. Based on these discounted cash flows, they decide whether a project is profitable for them, which changes they can propose to achieve better adjustment to available needs or to make the project profitable, and whether they can actually carry

it out at all. A project can be ever so well thought out from the point of view of town development, be logically founded on a particular planning vision and have an eye for quality, but if it is not profitable, a developer will not commit to it.

Claeyssens and his department do very practical research, directed at specific developers, small and large scale. Claeyssens explains: ‘We research how profitable real estate projects are, so that the right projects can be carried out effectively in the right places. Unoccupied or unsold properties for too long due to wrong anticipations are not an option. The speed of sale for properties is one of the essential indicators for any developer. If properties sell fast, supply and demand are well balanced. This market mechanism makes sure rare development opportunities are not underutilised’.

The dialogue between developers and the government

STEDENS is a research project to bring land surveyors, developers and parties providing the building permit closer together. The project aims to acquaint building permit providers with the economic and financial aspects of developers while it attempts to make developers from their side consider the needs of specific environments and building permit providers’ criteria. The aim is to develop a script, a kind of best

practice, addressing all the criteria in the development process, before the first sketch is even submitted. These criteria do not only relate to the location, but also to the typology of the neighbourhood, the dwelling density, the need for local facilities such as corner shops, the presence of quality green spaces, general integration into the urban fabric, the conceptual qualities an environment can carry, etc. All of them are elements that have to be worked out at the start of a project.

Claeyssens explains: ‘These days there is still a risk that the one who has to grant the building permit rejects the application because the developer has misunderstood the aim of the project or because there is an effective mismatch between created supply and the needs that are present. Then the developer has to start all over, although he has often bought the land already and pre-financed the consulting firm, so that the financial possibilities during the designing process have already been jeopardised. The procedure for obtaining permits can be made significantly shorter if the developer and the permit provider can be convinced of their common goal. That way qualitative aspects, healthy profitability and optimal allocation of finances can all be joined together and you’ll get a win-win situation for all the parties involved’.

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Revaluation

A second line of research focuses on revaluating shopping streets in town or village centres. It is a problem faced by all communities, towns and cities but which they don’t always know very well how to tackle. Primary locations in town or village centres are usually no problem at all, but outside of those, there is often a considerable turnaround of shops, offices and other kinds of property uses. ‘With our research, we can give cities and communities interesting ideas for revaluing such secondary locations,’ says Claeyssens.

Claeyssens thinks the most important thing in this kind of dossiers is constructive dialogue with all interest groups involved in them. He likes to refer to a revaluation project of an old shopping street in Antwerp city centre. An innovative real estate firm proposed to talk to the owners of the empty properties in the street. Claeyssens explains: ‘The problem of unoccupied properties was tackled in two ways. On the one side with a rental formula divided

into several stages. For example a quarter of the rent in the first year, half in the second year and so on. That way interested start-ups got the chance to get going and to grow. On the other side they looked for start-ups that more or less complemented each other. That way they created a certain interaction between the toy shop, the bicycle shop, a café, an organic baker, a coffee house here and there, etc. These start-ups were able to begin renting cheaply and made for healthy cross-pollination. It was only a short time before the street livened up completely’.

Another area of application is changing streets or areas designed to old planning patterns. This can be done with easy tweaks, such as adding one or two extra floors. Extra floors mean projects become more profitable for developers, housing pressures are dealt with in better ways and the urban fabric improves.

Claeyssens wants to grow his department further into a know-ledge centre which cities, councils and developers can turn to if they want to tackle very practical

problems. He also takes know-how from other research groups on board, based on gathered information and details. For example the Business and Information Management department of University College Ghent for its experience in e-commerce, retail and large retail chains. Or the Urbanity and Community Development research group - also of University College Ghent - when it comes to studying social fabrics in city neighbourhoods. He also uses collaborations with university departments for particular specific analyses of geographical and morphological data. ‘That way we can create scientifically based knowledge that can be translated directly into practice and where the work needs to be done,’ he adds.

More information

Department of Real Estate - Land and Property Surveying, University College Ghent:

http://expertise.hogent.be/en/organisations/vakgroep-makelaardij-en-landmeten(56852876-9b3e-4a81-

bdfd-1e558f109751).html

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The development of our horizontal metropolis

The horizontal metropolis as we know it in Flanders today, is the result of unchecked economic growth after World War II. The petrochemical industry boomed in the harbour of Antwerp. Major car brands built assembly plants in the cities of Vilvoorde, Genk, Ghent and Antwerp. All attention went to developing grand infrastructure, motorways and industrial estates. The image of the middle classes living and working in cities was substituted by the baby boomers who wanted to build their own homes and commute to work on the industrial estates in their own cars. The urbanisation of the countryside around the urban centres, so-called suburbanisation, gathered speed.

‘But people at that time lost track of the qualities cities had. Because the urban population left the centres for the outskirts, town centres started to crumble,’

says Michael Ryckewaert, lecturer and affiliated to Cosmopolis, the Centre for Urban Research at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the Unit of Architecture and Design at the Department of Architecture, KU Leuven.

In his PhD dissertation entitled Building the economic backbone of the Belgian welfare state (2011), Ryckewaert gives us a piercing image of policies for infrastructure, planning and architecture after WWII. These three ingredients formed the basis for the economic backbone of the Belgian welfare state between 1945 and 1973. Ryckewaert explains: ‘The fairy tale lasted until 1973, the year of the first oil crisis which ended the era of unseen prosperity. And it was only by the 1990s that organised urban renewal gathered pace once again. The Sociaal Impulsfonds (SIF) tried to hand deprived neighbourhoods in Flemish cities a new lease of life with neighbourhood and integration projects. Soon it changed its strategy to focus on city renewal policies directed at physical projects. Areas around railway stations and working class neighbourhoods were tackled. The

Flemish government came with significant subsidies. Concrete plans were made to give some thirteen Flemish cities a major facelift. Some projects have been carried out by now, while others are still going on’.

In recent years there has been lots of research into the history of cities and the development of urban planning after WWII. The domain was until recently a blind spot in Flanders and Belgium as a whole. But the entire development of living in and certainly working outside the city, planning, policies and economic development has in the meantime been very well documented. These are great debates, internationally too. Research into urbanisation outside major cities is precisely one of the specialities where Flemish scientists make a difference.

More information:

Cosmopolis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel: http://www.cosmopolis.be/

Unit Architecture and Design, Department of Architecture, KU Leuven: http://architectuur.kuleuven.be/onderzoek/design/?lang=en

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RESEARCH IN FLANDERS>< our knowledge

makes the difference

KNOWLEDGE AREAFLANDERS

Author: Jan Van Pelt

The thematic papers are published by Research in Flanders, a project run by Flanders Knowledge Area.

The project Research in Flanders is funded by the Flemish Government, Department of Foreign Affairs.

Flanders Knowledge Area supports, through different projects, the internationalization of higher education in Flanders, Belgium. Ravensteingalerij 27 – bus 61000 BrusselT. + 32 (0)2 792 55 19 www.FlandersKnowledgeArea.be

D/2014/12.812/3

Editions1. Materials Science2. Urban Planning3. Industrial Design4. Research in Times of Crisis

© NASA