051BRU
Program
Urban study
Location
Bruxelles
Date
2012 - 2012
Themes
Urban, Public
Phase
Completed
Surfaces
Team
Studio 012 : Bernardo Secchi/Paola Viganò, Creat/UCL, Egis Mobilité, T-U München, Idea Consult
Client
Perspective
Budget
Development of a metropolitan territorial vision for Brussels up to 2040
Premises
Brussels needs a radical and innovative project. The challenges of the near future, the challenge of demographic growth, employment, training and education, the environmental challenge, social inequalities and internationalisation require that all city policy be inserted into a completely new frame of reference: a spatial vision, a structure of mobility networks; a way of doing urban planning that abandons the preconceptions of the past and takes into account the experiences of recent decades and what they have brought us. Without renouncing its long tradition, Brussels does not so much need a policy of incremental improvements as a radical break: in the field of ideas, practices, projects and the transition to action. In our opinion, radicalism is necessary to better grasp the dimension of change and its potential.
A horizontal metropolis
Brussels sits within its metropolitan and global reference territories, at the heart of the North Western Metropolitan Area. Our studies started from the bottom up, rejecting all preconceived ideas. The reflection is based on a new perspective of the metropolis. Thinking of Brussels as a ‘horizontal metropolis’, a metropolis with vague and uncertain boundaries which, in this study, concerns the territory of the three valleys of the Dender, the Senne and the Dyle.
The study attempts to show how a series of evolutionary concepts can guide territorial reading and interpretation by revealing project themes.
How topography can become a topology that gives meaning to places; how diversity can become the percolation of different social strata in renewed urban fabrics; how a city usually considered to be composed of fragments can use the specificity of each of them; how mobility networks can become spaces for relationships; how the seemingly opposing concepts of hierarchy and isotropy can become complementary and, finally, how urban space, which is particularly limited by an institutional and political vision in Brussels, could function better for everyone.
Unlike other cities, the horizontal metropolis of Brussels can be an opportunity to develop an original and innovative sustainable model, supporting the reduction of energy consumption and emissions, the development of biodiversity, individual and collective comfort, and the construction of a high environmental quality living space. It can develop projects to adapt to climate change by exploring the full range of modes of transport beyond the car and focusing on a public transport project. It could also make more space for water by placing it at the centre of a reflection on the nature of public space. The ‘horizontal metropolis’ will not be homogeneous within; on the contrary, it will enhance differences: the qualities of places and parts, transcending divides.
To be realistic, a vision must come to terms with the time and resources available or those that can be mobilised by the vision itself, but it must also address all its stakeholders in order to mobilise them around a common purpose. To do this, action must be taken down to the smallest details. And even at this level, improving the living environment and the quality of the habitable space in the Brussels metropolis requires a radical stance.