Inclusive City-Making

Over the past fifteen years, it has become increasingly common for local actors, artists and urban activists to occupy vacant sites in the city fabric prior to their top-down urban development. The best known example currently in Brussels is the Josaphat site (photo on this page) to the east of the region. While the MSA’s guide plan for the site was developed with no participative process (apart from the organization of one information session about decisions that had already been taken), several local non-profit organizations began activating the site by creating activities to generate encounter on the site, including a vegetable garden or organising cultural events. The Common Josaphat Collective, in close collaboration with the active local associations, is developing and promoting a more socially-engaged vision that could be integrated into the transformation of the site. Even though such message might be heard by those who hold the decision-making power such bottom-up appropriation of the public realm often remains temporary and the vision has a too limited impact upon the permanent development of the city. By describing and reflecting upon two case studies that I developed through my Alive Architecture practice in Brussels, the first a bottom-up initiative and the second project developed within a top-down framework, I will describe how I overcame the divide between bottom-up and top-down urban planning in order to stimulate co-production of the public realm in Brussels.

ISBN:978-3-88778-490-4

Publication year:2016

Accessibility:Closed