2- Definition of the perimeter of the analysis

from Connecting mobility policies to urban fabrics

2- The urban planning studies approach

2-1 Area definition

The Brussels-Capital Region represents the administrative territory of 162.4 square kilometres comprising nineteen municipalities. The history of the creation region remains relatively recent which explains the discrepancy between the administrative boundaries and the urban continuity. While the early structure is easily identifiable through the remaining medieval enclosures, the current limits of the Brussels urban area remain undistinguished. This current situation brings to the surface one of the governance challenges facing the Region's ambitions. Indeed, the actions taken within the Region's borders since its creation in 1989 are applicable only inside that perimeter, their success and impacts are linked to a more extensive reality.

2-2 Area redefinition

The previous definition lacked however a better understanding of the local geographical context. The work of Newman and Kenworthy (1999) demonstrates the importance of retracing the evolution of the urban form to tackle the urban planning issue as well as sustainable transition processes. They advance the force of transportation as one of the critical factors that shape cities. Through this argument, we can define the development of the city considering the dominating transportation system used in each era (see figure 0.1). Newman and Kenworthy untangle three types of cities overlaying on each other.

Table II : The characteristics of each type of city adapted from Newman and Kenworthy (1999) and applied by the author to Brussels urban region

In the same perspective, the B-CR has already underpinned three simultaneous boundaries representing three realities (Dessouroux & Puissant, 2008) of the current situation as seen in the figure.

The administrative borders (in dark red): the ones mentioned earlier corresponding to the sum of the 19 municipalities

The morphological agglomeration (in red): is characterised by very irregular boundaries, englobing the neighbouring municipalities with a density higher than 650 people /km². It includes various industrial sites and ample green spaces.

The functional urban area (in green): It includes municipalities whose populations have economic links to the B-CR. It somehow matches the last province of Brabant.

The face of these three realities raises the decision to limit the study area. In this research, we will focus mainly on the administrative borders and the morphological agglomeration cited before. This

Figure 13 : The spatial structure of the urban Region of Brussels (Dessouroux & Puissant, 2008, p. 27)

could be explained because the first one represents the source of the exnovation initiative and the second one represents the most direct shockwave of this exnovation outside the B-CR boundaries.

2-3 Area examination

This section serves as a demonstration of the validity of the choice to include the morphological agglomeration into the analysis of the challenges of exnovation of the private automobile in B-CR. It is also the first key to solutions for those challenges. The following exercise is based on the previous table of Newman and Kenworthy's division of the urban fabric of the city. The exercise consists of locating the three urban fabrics (Walking/Transit/Car City) for Brussels and identifying the specificities of the urban development of Brussels. The data used will be derived from a map atlas synthesis that describes the 20th-century urbanisation in and around Brussels (Cavalieri, et al., 2021).

In this atlas, the historical development of the city is shown here in six phases (before 1858, 1858-1880, 1880-1930, 1930-1955, 1955-1997, 1997-2020) of urbanisation beginning from 1858. The evolution is based on IGEAT data up to 1997 and LABOXX+I data processing

Figure 14 : Map of the historical development of and around Brussels (Cavalieri, et al., 2021, pp. 52-53)

The Walking city:

As in many other middle-aged cities, Brussels had an urban centre quite dense and with a small footprint. The main mean of transportation was walking -until the arrival of mechanical transportation hence 1869- which kept the travel time under half an hour (Newman & Kenworthy, 1999, p. 27).

Figure 15 : Sattelite image of Walking City in B-CR (left) and outskirt ( right)

• Comprised inside the Second enclosure (14th Century), the urban fabric is composed of different periods till today. • Urbanisation before 1858, • It contains a network of streets with various widths and public places. A large pedestrian zone allows access to cyclists and hourly restricted access is set for loading and unloading of people and goods. • A general road speed limit of 30km/hour and in some places 20km/hour for residential areas. • As a central core, it concentrates the buses, tramways and metro lines forming a star-like web. • Easy access to the three main train stations of the Region. • The area includes the old fabric of former villages. These narrow ribbons of urbanisation along the main access roads often connect the historic village centres, such as Boitsfort, Vleurgat,

Ixelles, Berchem, etc.

The Transit city:

The transit system in Brussels begins in the late 1860s, as the pressure of demographic growth started to rise, the cities needed to grow. Industries, and housing for newcomers, required more space.

Figure 16 : Sattelite image of Transit City in B-CR (left) and outskirt ( right)

The tramways helped to shape a new form of urban development. The urban fabrics were less dense. The tramways reduced the distance-time between the central city and the villages surrounding it. Quickly the latter were incorporated into Brussels city. The transit city can be encompassed in the administrative boundaries of B-CR.

• The previous map shows that from 1858 to 1955, the city expanded in a radial pattern with broad ribbons of urbanisation and follows a somewhat concentric pattern and creates a dense urban environment.

• Medium density activities cluster along the tram corridors and nodes with remarkable buildings marking the passage/arrival of trams. • Transit-Oriented urban development. Many tram stations were designed as evolutive to become metros (example of tram 3, now in works to become metro3). • A system of the vicinal tramway that travelled long distances, this network has been gradually replaced by a bus network. • Today a reduced tramway system than the historical one. • Combined tramways, metro and bus system linking different municipalities (former villages)

The car city:

The hegemony of the automobile in Brussels started at the end of the 50s, with Expo 58 the ambition was clear and sound. The car shall be the future, it represented modernity, the revival of the city after a destructive war. As the capital of Europe, Brussels was to be ready to welcome the traffic coming from Belgium as well as the neighbouring countries. Many projects were launched to increase the capacity of the radial arteries and to facilitate the traffic between the radial highways with concentric roads (inner belt, outer belt, the ring) (Hubert, 2008). The transit spread over the RER zone, somewhere between the morphological agglomeration and the functional area. The maps show that after 1955, the ribbons of urbanisation created during the transit city era expanded in length and width. The residual open spaces within the ring have been mainly filled.

Figure 17 : Sattelite image of Walking City in B-CR (left) and outskirt ( right)

• Separation of the traffic flows to ease automobile traffic and consider pedestrians, cyclists, public transport, parked cars, etc as all the obstacles that reduce the speed of the automobile. • High rise buildings, brusselization era; building ignoring their urban context and bringing mobility pressure. • Urban sprawl as real estate developers were in the quest for cheaper land to attract low-income families to purchase a home. The migration of well-to-do households to the affluent suburbs as in the B-CR was seen as unsafe and polluted. These two trends have the common feature of being low-density urbanism. • High dependence on the automobile to move around because of the lack of public transit connecting Brussels to the suburbs, and the suburbs to the suburbs.

The reading of the urban form provided by LABOXX+I and Newman and Kenworthy (1999) brings a complementary understanding strategy of the urban development of Brussels. However, the reading of the walking city, transit city, and car city fabric should not be translated to an exclusive area that evolves into concentric circles. Instead, we should read the space in terms of the presence of one or more transport modes inside a transport mode-dominated space. In other words, the evolution of transport in Brussels and its outskirts created an intertwined system where different transport modes

Figure 18 : Density and typology of land use in Brussels and its outskirts. Data from Urban Atlas 2018.

share the space. And where you can find for example parts of the characteristics of a Walking city inside an Automobile city because the latter developed around it, and you can find in the same area various density related to each type of city (see Figures below).