Temporary Spaces in a Hyper-Mosaic
by Nurjehan Mawaz-Khan
Summary: In May 2018, Mundus Urbano (MU) went on a class excursion to the European capital of paradox and identity crises — at the time all I really knew was “Brussels: The Home of Magritte, Horta and the European Parliament”. The itinerary comprised two sessions per day for 5 days, accompanied by a series of papers to be presented (to MU, by MU) in pairs over the course of the trip. Our paper was The Role of Temporary Use in Urban (Re)Development by Aurelie de Smet, while a number of the other papers helped situate her work. This piece of writing is a reflection on the urban development of Brussels, and the contextualisation of de Smet’s ideas therein, through the lens of our trip and the provided papers.
Keywords: urban development; large-scale projects; socio-economic disparity; waiting spaces
As a visit to the city might well uncover, Brussels offers much more to the urban enthusiast than its current staid persona of the European Capital implies. In the built context, the city’s chequered history of urban development has left its fabric resembling a mosaic of architectural styles and typologies. A relatively far cry from the regulated assemblage of uniform streets, boulevards and districts that one might familiarise with many cities in this part of the world — Brussels has this but a lot, lot more going on. In fact, the constant flux in public space has lent its citizens a heightened sense of awareness and possession of communal spaces. Over the course of the trip, there was a recurrent theme of residents and users scanning newspapers to track possible new development and rallying for their local public spaces — their right to the city — often to be left alone.
The itinerary sessions included guided walks that gave an incisive view of many of the city’s characteristics and processes. For example, in our time with Marianne Fossé, a doctoral candidate researching Brussels’ historical warehouses and their typologies, we mapped not only the lost and/or long gone elements of the city’s historic mercantile character, its spaces of production and storage as they were shut down due to the covering of almost all of its waterways, but also its industrial transition from manufacturing to tertiary service provision — and how this, in turn fueled some of the socioeconomic divisions within the city. The ‘Decolonisation Walk’ or as it was listed, the Post-Colonial Visions of Brussels, led by pro-African rights’ collective CMCLD (Collectif Mémoire Coloniale et Lutte contre les Discriminations), illustrated the atrocities that happened, and continue to happen at a more subtle level, to migrant African populations living in the city. The focus lay on areas that have been largely appropriated by these communities, even as their access to formal ownership rights remains low.
Hyper-mosaic
Brussels very visibly wears the brunt of its situation at ‘the crossroads of European history’ (Ritter, 2011). Apart from the obvious Flemish and French duality and differences, the evolution of the built environment reveals the historical cycle of large swathes of land, across the city and typically including lower-income groups, being subject to violently imposed strategies: starting with the mass destruction caused by Napoleon’s war (1659), to the violent effects of Hausmannisation and further delusions of grandeur embodied in the city plans of its newly-instated 18th century monarchs, to the 20th century need for an effective transport system to support crucial industries while its polluted and disease-infested waterways were covered up (see footnote 1) and finally, the chronic and continual impacts of aspirational modernisation: development that favours automobiles and large steel and glass (re: cardboard) buildings. Unsurprisingly then, such an order of events had led to the term Brusselisation: haphazard urban redevelopment.
To these sequential, anti-poor spatial ramifications in the city, one might add the continuous socio-spatial pressures of two distinct sets of immigrants: the decades-long migration from Belgium’s (and France’s) former colonies, an ethnically-rich mix of people traditionally marginalised and mistreated as that are denied attention and proper assistance (Van Hamme, Grippa and Van Criekingen, 2016) and more recently, a newer, much more affluent set coming in to fulfill their well-heeled, official capacities as (we learnt at the session at the EU Parliament) their elected, representative role — and everything that entails — at the Capital of Europe. This final pressure includes the ever-rising expectations of such a place: what might the ‘heart of Europe’ look like (Van Hamme, Wertz and Biot, 2011) and who lives there? Thus today, the city’s raze-and-rebuild policies are perpetuated through the power dynamics of the land, construction and housing markets, all embedded within the free market — all favouring profit (and not people). This then, sustains the class disparity that began with the 18th century suburban incentivisation for the rich — an approach that paved the way for a rather ignored city centre — and created the concentric socio-economic divide that defines Brussels’ income map (see footnote 2) today. The central areas still display high rates of unemployment, while research in these areas exposes feelings of alienation and resentment amongst the youth (Mazzocchetti, 2012).
And yet..
Despite this burden of socio-economic complexity and the oft-proposed, outrageous and blind-sided plans by greedy developers, the city’s vibrant migrant communities and its Bouwmeester’s (BM) progressive urban strategies, also work to define 21st century Brussels. Over the past decades, there have been movements of sustainable neighbourhood development and social integration, some successful (re: suburban) for a time, such as the utopic socialist garden cities that MU visited with a former member of the urban activist group ARAU (Atelier de recherche et d’action urbaines), and others that never quite reached their intended mark (Bilande, Dal, Damay et al, 2016; Lenel, 2017 and Ananian, 2017).
MU’s visit to the city’s chief architect’s team at the Bouwmeester’s (BM) office, was particularly insightful. We discovered that the entire process of urban development and upgrading in the city is determined through the use of Competitions as a tool, supported by in-house Research and Quality Control Departments. At the legislative level, the city is its own region demarcated along a decentralised structure that comprises 19 municipalities, each with their own administration and city councils. New projects in the city must go through a competitive bidding process; those short-listed are compensated for their time (!) and designs that make it to the final round are further improved upon utilising in-house capacities. Meanwhile, neighbourhoods located in chosen municipalities are granted time and money to improve upon their situation and meet local requirements. This last scenario was demonstrated on a visit to the central municipality of Etterbeek where, complemented by the candid — and spirited — sagacity of one of its residents, MU was introduced to a neighbourhood that was working with a part-central, part-municipal, part-local grant to upgrade its spaces on a refreshingly small scale.
Even as there is a vague recognition at the public scale of the lack and need thereof for inclusivity and support to these typically — often migrant-based — disregarded areas, the increasingly inccessible prices of land and housing, as well as the culture of large-scale urban projects across the city, are still the norm. On the broader scene, the BM in partnership with respective competition-project winners, the public planning agency (perspective.brussels) and the Commisioner’s Office, has taken up a number of these large projects with an aim to promote the renewal of urban spaces through mixed-use development and the spatial incorporation of small-scale enterprises (that a large part of the inner populations are involved in), with an aesthetic focus on the regeneration of Brussels’ industrial character. Some examples of these are French architect Alexandre Chemetoff’s winning proposal for a 14 km strip of the canal — The Kanal Project — and the 15 sq. km area slated for urban highway removal at the southeastern edge of Brussels by the firm ORG. In the context of regularly proposed large-scale projects, the office of the BM works to re-programme them such that they include more than just the single function they are built for, an example we were shown at the BM office: a cement factory that doubles as a concert venue.
...Waiting Spaces
It is clear then that Aurelie de Smet’s paper is very well-grounded in Brussels’ background of large-scale urban (re)production, its BM’s efforts to build multi-tasking spaces and the socio-economic polarities in its population and their service provision. In essence, de Smet’s work imagines one as a readily available Band-Aid for the other. Basing her research and case studies, some self-initiated, others extant, within the city’s animated development scene, she promotes the alternative usage of sites that are marked for these large-scale urban projects. Given that these sites remain empty for long periods of time due to the time taken for permissions, building allowances and other bureaucratic processes, in addition to long-drawn out construction phases — all of which are parcelled within the project cycle — in spatial terms, this prolonged stage of pre-construction is where the concept of temporary or waiting spaces is borne.
It is during this length of time, while future development sites of all sizes lie in disuse, that new (re: other) users, often those who would be otherwise unable to afford the occupation of said space, enter the picture and attribute a system of alternative functions to the space. These functions and people, temporary as they are until the site re-enters its slated cycle of development, usually tend to contrast the intended mono-thematic (re: capitalist and pro-rich) programme and cater to the shortfall in fulfilling citizens’ actual, pressing requirements. And in doing so, as Smet highlights, they provide a ‘test-bed for urban innovation’. She promotes this surrogate occupation of temporary spaces to the point of creation for a network of such ‘waiting spaces’, claiming that the patterns of usage derived therein might be more accurate indicators of — and effectively ‘guide, initiate and influence’ — urban transformation that is better suited to the needs of the people of Brussels. This exercise of regenerating the ‘intermittent city’ (Farone and Sarti, 2008) would then help to provide a plan of action to deal with the challenges of contemporary urban development.
Smet’s methodology is rooted in both theory — having based the spatial (dis)ambiguities of waiting spaces in Foucalt’s conception of Heterotopias as well as De Solà-Morales’ work on Terrain Vagues — and practical work, including 10 case studies located in different parts of the city, exemplifying the potential diversity of temporary use beyond location and single user group , as well as relevant document analysis and interviews. She also positions her work alongside historical precedents such as the citizen occupation of Les Halles in Paris (between the 1960s and 1970s), Brussels own urban activist movements, ARAU from the 1970s and Disturb from the 1990s, and its case of temporary occupation at the Hotel Central in 1995. She categorises temporary occupation and similar usage of space within three categories: (1) Activism — citizens hoping to reorder the ’disgraceful’ and ‘undercreative’ emptiness of temporary spaces, (2) Opportunism — whereby citizens self-appropriate available spaces to fulfill their basic needs, and (3) Self-Organisation — the primary means of successful collective occupation. In the case studies there is also an interesting connection to be made between waiting spaces and public art, art associations and artists in general, that further support the idea of pro-creativity that the alternative usage of temporary spaces implies.
She concludes her paper with suggestions for tools that could support her proposed network of temporary/ waiting spaces: a flexible and interactive regional database of temporary spaces to aggregate specific geographic and structural information on available temporary spaces; an ‘office for temporary use’ that might provide a point of contact, guidance and experience-sharing for temporary projects — in line with the Neuland project in Berlin and the Meanwhile project in the UK; a public department for (the study of) temporary spaces for detection, coordination and organisation for these; and finally, crucial government support — financial and otherwise — to validate this progressive and perfectly in sync idea, given that formal institutions can prove to be the most averse and yet once convinced, the strongest alibis for such postulations.
Smet’s paper then, shows that there are innovative ways that the urban development of Brussels might traverse, beyond solely serving the moneyed EU-spurred influx, and finally take its beautifully diverse population into full consideration by employing processes that are equally vibrant.
1 What has been done to the River Zenne during this period of time is equally tragic for Nature and man but given that Nature is stronger, man might as well work towards bringing her out.
2 As shown in the presentation at the office of the Brussels Bouwmeester.
