Brusselsization

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An example of Brusselsization. Many historical buildings have been demolished and replaced by non-specific modern buildings. A skyscraper now stands on the site of the Brussels Volkshaus , which existed until 1965 .

Brusselsisation ( brusselization in English , bruxellisation in French and brusseling in Dutch ) or as a verb brusselsize , describes the urban planning term of the sometimes uncontrolled and inappropriate insertion of large-scale new buildings of modernist architecture in historical districts, such as in Brussels and in others over centuries grown cities can be seen.

This pejorative designation applies to all urban developments whose pattern corresponds to the rather uncontrolled and immeasurable development of Brussels since the 1960s and 1970s, which resulted from the lack of area regulation and a laissez-faire attitude of the city administration, specifically in the case of the "Manhattan Plan “In the northern quarter and the construction of the EU headquarters in the Leopold quarter.

The example of Brussels

From 1960 to the 1980s

The construction known as Brusselsization was originally a type of urban planning used by the Brussels City Council in the context of Expo 58 . In order to prepare the city for the Expo 58, buildings were torn down regardless of their architectural or historical relevance, in order to make space for office buildings and apartment blocks that had a correspondingly high capacity. In addition, boulevards and tunnels were set up in order to meet the population increase properly and to increase the efficiency of the infrastructure.

Due to Brussels' role as the seat of the EU and NATO administrations, further infrastructure measures were undertaken that led to the progressive Brusselsization, including the construction of the European Commission site.

In protest against the building policy pursued by Mayor Lucien Cooremans , numerous citizen movements formed among the residents of Brussels and within the international architecture scene. Nevertheless, Cooremans pushed through the renewal of the cityscape against resistance from civil society ; A well-known example is the demolition of Victor Horta's Art Nouveau Volkshaus (an important building of architectural modernism from 1889) in 1965, which was implemented despite protests by 700 architects from all over the world.

In the context of the protests, architectural experts named the form of urban development as Brusselsization. Spokesmen in this context were Léon Krier and Maurice Culot , who formulated an anti-capitalist urban development in opposition to the prevailing uncontrolled modernization of Brussels. A similar development can be observed in other, primarily European, cities, but a differentiation must be made with regard to the fact that the modernization process at the end of the 1960s was mainly driven by the office space requirements of EU institutions.

Other historical examples of the modernization of Brussels

Brussels residents have seen the city modernize on several occasions. In the 19th century, for example, avenues based on the Parisian model were set up. The connection between the north and south of the city should also be mentioned as a modernization measure.

King Leopold II was supposed to create a model for large capitals with imperial claims in Brussels.

In the middle of the 20th century, a trend-setting alliance between entrepreneurial urban developers and the city administration to pursue visionary urban development, which, however, did not take the residents into account.

1990s: from Brusselsization to gutting

Brusselsization in Bucharest .

Laws were introduced in the early 1990s to restrict the demolition of buildings with historical or architectural value. In 1999, the city administration explicitly spoke out against the unstructured construction of skyscrapers and called them architecturally incompatible with the aesthetics of traditional historical buildings.

The Urban Planning Ordinance of 1991 enabled regional administrations to reject demolition requests for historically, aesthetically or culturally relevant buildings. Furthermore, certain areas could be marked as cultural heritage by the Monument Preservation Ordinance of 1993 in order to protect them from demolition. In 2007, the International Development Plan (IDP) in Brussels was implemented by the regional administration, which provides specific and sometimes questionable fulfillment criteria for large-scale construction projects, which were observed in the construction of the Square Meeting Center, the Europe House and Monts des Arts.

See also

literature

  • K. Romanczyk: Transforming Brussels into an international city - Reflections on 'Brusselization'. In: Cities 2011. ( PDF ).
  • Véronique Béghain, Jean-Paul Gabilliet: The cultural shuttle: the United States in / of Europe (=  European contributions to American studies . Band 57 ). VU University Press, Amsterdam 2004, ISBN 90-5383-949-6 .
  • André De Vries: Brussels: a cultural and literary history . Signal Books, Oxford 2003, ISBN 1-902669-47-9 .
  • Mark Elliott, Geert Cole: Belgium and Luxembourg (=  Country Guide Series ). 4th edition. Lonely Planet, 2010, ISBN 978-1-74104-989-3 , Brussels.
  • Carola Hein: The capital of Europe: architecture and urban planning for the European Union (=  Perspectives on the twentieth century ). Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, ISBN 0-313-07286-8 .
  • Evert Lagrou: Metropolitan governance and spatial planning: comparative case studies of European city-regions . Ed .: WGM Salet, Anton Kreukels, Andy Thornley. Taylor & Francis, 2003, ISBN 978-0-415-27449-4 , Brussels: A superimposition of social, cultural, and spatial layers.
  • AG Papadopoulos: Urban regimes and strategies: building Europe's central executive district in Brussels . University of Chicago Press, 1996, ISBN 0-226-64559-2 .
  • John H. Stubbs, Emily G. Makaš: Architectural Conservation in Europe and the Americas . John Wiley and Sons, 2011, ISBN 978-0-470-90099-4 , Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
  • Erik Swyngedouw: Relocating global cities: from the center to the margins . Ed .: Michael Mark Amen, Kevin Archer, M. Martin Bosman (=  Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series . G). Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, ISBN 0-7425-4122-3 , Reluctant Globalizers: The Paradoxes of “Glocal” Development in Brussels.

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