Suchergebnisse

Brussels' urban space, like that of many other cities, is dotted with evidence of a productive industrial past. The activities that took place there were generally not geared to mass production for export, but to small-scale manufacturing aimed at supplying the needs of local city dwellers. That small-scale manufacturing industry included members of the building trade such as contractors, joiners and builders' merchants who catered to the demand for housing in an ever-expanding city. Their business premises formed a vital link in the creation and renovation of the urban fabric. This article focuses on the values of small-scale industrial heritage from the building trade, which is under enormous pressure in a city like Brussels. The dynamics of constantly rising real estate prices make residential redevelopment a lucrative investment. Thanks to gentrification, many workshops are being converted into housing and former warehouses are falling prey to large-scale property development. Real estate dynamics, scaling-up and changing market conditions are also contributing to the disappearance of the small-scale, live-work fabric that fosters a beneficial mix of functions. The expertise and skills that for centuries have supplied the basic needs of the city in a sustainable manner are then lost. In light of growing traffic congestion and unemployment, academics and urban planners are becoming increasingly convinced of the need for permanently embedded, city-servicing economic actors like building businesses. Thus, even today, small-scale industrial heritage is vital to the functioning of the urban economy, in that offers the possibility of spatially organizing or reorganizing city-servicing activities within a dense urban fabric. Inspired by integrated concepts of heritage, we therefore argue in favour of a broadening of industrial heritage values aimed at anchoring the use of such locations in time and space. We take issue with an exclusively material approach to industrial heritage by pointing out the immaterial heritage value of a continuity of productive use. After a brief theoretical reflection on the value of small-scale industrial heritage in the city, we examine the historical evolution of Brussels' industrial heritage at the macro level between 1890 and 1970, the period in which the development of the suburbs of Brussels was in full swing. We use a series of exemplary cases to illustrate the different trajectories of continuity and discontinuity of heritage on the one hand, and productive use of building trade locations in Brussels on the other. We also try to get to grips with the motivations of businesses that abandon the city, cease to exist or manage to adapt to volatile market conditions. This article uses a selection of cases to challenge a purely material approach to industrial heritage and makes the case for further research into the question of how individual heritage legislation might also recognize immaterial heritage values in historical business activity on a particular site or in an industrial building.

Dutch socioeconomic concertation has experienced some transformative changes in its modus operandi in recent years, which has given the 'Polder Model' a new lease on life for the time being. Building on an older tradition of sharing political space with civil society organizations, the recent liberal-social democratic government coalition, with Mark Rutte at the helm (2012-2017), has been able to enact a surprisingly successful structural reform agenda in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Governing in times of significant economic, social and political uncertainty, it is no mean feat that the Rutte II administration – de facto a minority government – is the first Dutch coalition to complete its term since the administration under Wim Kok (1994-1998). After the foundational Social Accord (the so-called Mondriaan Akkoord) in April 2013, a series of reform agreements were reached in the policy areas of education, housing, healthcare, industrial and energy policy. For each of these more meso-level accords, a variety of civil society organizations participated that were beyond the traditional social partners of business and labor. Over time these seemingly ad hoc, open and non-hierarchical agreements materialized in a trajectory of cumulatively transformative policy change. The political tactic of the Rutte II government stands out in comparison with the halcyon Dutch miracle era of the Polder Model in the 1980s and 1990. We explain the new modes of Dutch socioeconomic policy concertation and its political tactic as a kind of rallying around existing institutional arrangements to bring the contested political and social center together behind a major adjustment strategy, including retrenchment, compensatory social meas­ures and investments, when reform output and outcomes are fundamentally uncertain. Whether the new Polder Model will prove robust remains an open question. Recently, new multiple party covenants were negotiated in the textile and banking industry. Meanwhile a number of issues concerning regional labor market regulation and work-life balance reconciliation have yet to be resolved.