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Abstract It is essential for democracy that political parties should act within their promulgated policy frameworks, which are formally represented in election programmes. If political parties deviate from this principle, the election would lose its meaning, jeopardising democracy. In this respect, planning in Groningen in the 1970s, which realised progressive plans like the traffic circulation plan, was democratic, although it was criticised for lacking public participation. However, planning in the 1980s casts serious doubt on its democratic nature. Various large-scale projects were promoted, and they caused harsh criticism even within the government party, Labour Party. This paper focuses on four projects, that is, the PTT (office development), Brink (residential towers), Casino and Museum, all of which were planned in or next to the inner city of Groningen in the 1980s. This paper will examine these projects in terms of the policy frameworks of the Labour Party, which were created in the 1970s. These projects brought about drastic change of historical landscape, and were clearly contrary to the party frameworks or those measures that were introduced to guarantee the frameworks, such as the local land use plan. As a result, they gave rise to not only strong opposition among citizens, but also criticism of party members who still cherished those party frameworks.

"OpTrek in Transvaal. On the role of public art in urban development" reflects on the position of artists in areas of urban transformation and on the concept of urban curating. The articles present a survey of the commissions and research in the field of art and architecture initiated by mobile project office OpTrek in Transvaal between 2002 and 2010. Experts from home and abroad, such as 2012architecten from Rotterdam, the Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata and the Austrian artists' group WochenKlausur were invited to comment on the changes in the district with their work in the built environment. With this publication OpTrek contributes to the international discussion among artists, architects, urban planners, politicians and policy makers on the future development of urban spaces

Urban development; Economy - De serie 'Voorstudies en achtergronden' omvat werkstukken die in het kader van de werkzaamheden van de WRR tot stand zijn gekomen en naar zijn oordeel van zodanige kwaliteit en betekenis zijn, dat publicatie gewenst is. De verantwoordelijkheid voor de inhoud en de ingenomen standpunten berust bij de auteurs.

This book questions the why and how of setting up artistic and social practices in interstitial spaces in the city, urban cracks. Urban cracks are conceptualised as in-between time spaces, characterised by an apparent void, where different logics meet and conflict. The lamination of different historically grown layers of meaning and the crossing of conflicting logics in these 'useless' places, are highlighted as significant features which artists and community workers could act upon. The authors discuss the potential of localized artistic and social practices that work with the context of urban cracks, and therefore bring forth significant political meanings. Artists and community workers are both engaged in reading, analysing and translating pertinent developments of society, although their intentions and outcomes are fairly different. This book is the result of a two-year interdisciplinary research project of the University College Ghent: a collaboration between the School of Arts and the Faculty of Education, Health and Social Work

Luca Bertolini stelt in zijn oratie dat het leven in een mobiele samenleving beleidsmakers met bijzondere dilemma's confronteert. Contemporaine leefstijlen en bedrijfsmatige praktijken zijn sterk afhankelijk van mobiliteit. Mensen wonen op de ene plek, werken op een tweede, en recreëren of socialiseren op nog eens een derde. De productie en consumptie van goederen en diensten zijn ruimtelijk diffuse, wereldomvattende processen. Tegelijkertijd zijn de negatieve effecten van mobiliteit, en het besef daarvan, groot. De zorg over files, energieverbruik, schadelijke emissies, verkeersveiligheid, ge

This colloquium focuses on urban and princely space in the Duchy of Brabant in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. The focus is on how territorial developments were perceived in different social milieus. After all, urban elites, the monarch and his entourage had different - but sometimes similar - opinions about what Brabant actually was and used various media to communicate their ideas about it. Administrative, narrative and cartographic sources, architecture, literature and art bear witness to this. The Belgian-Dutch "Stichting Colloquium De Brabantse Stad" organizes an international meeting every three years at which various aspects of the history of the cities and of urban life in the old Duchy of Brabant are examined. The colloquium is organized alternately in the provinces of Antwerp, Flemish Brabant, Walloon Brabant, North Brabant and in the Brussels Capital Region. The XIXth colloquium, taking place in Brussels at the Université Saint-Louis, is being organized in cooperation with the NWO research project Imagining a territory.

This paper deals with the electoral & political consequences of urban region formation. The electoral geography of new political parties differs substantially from that of traditional ones. New parties are mainly successful in different parts of urban regions. The declining traditional parties have rather a regional pattern, although some of them show new spatial patterns too. These developments are interpreted in the context of the cleavage theory, in which old & new cleavages are linked with a different spatiality. Following the Anglo-Saxon literature an increasing process of polarisation is hypothesised between the welfare state orientated city & a neo-conservative & neo-liberal suburban fringe. This article examines & proofs the existence of these processes in the urban region of Brussels by means of individual-level & ecological electoral data. Figures. Adapted from the source document.

While increasingly more people live in cities, urban peripheries are expending at the cost of nature. This book explains how sustainability can be achieved by urban redevelopment and upcycling. The large-scale processes of urban redevelopment in this book are based on a successful brownfield project in Netherlands, the Paleiskwartier in 's-Hertogenbosch. 'Designing for sustainability through upcycling' tells the inside story of nearly three decades how policies were made, decisions taken, designs created, how the projects developed in phases and how the city government partnered the private sector in a unique way. A series of essays and short interviews with key players involved – including directors, designers, developers and city-officials – provides a detailed overview of how this project was actually realized. This book offers first-hand information of 30 years of development as told by master-planner Shyam Khandekar. Professor Vinayak Bharne places the process of upcycling in the context of developments from other parts of the world. A must-read for those on the threshold of undertaking a brownfield redevelopment process in their city

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.

In the beginning, there was the word. The early evolution of parliament in the mediaeval princedoms of the Netherlands'Parliaments' or representative political institutions in the princedoms of the Low Countries came about as a result of political practice rather than any legislative initiative. There is a clear link with the early and exceptional degree of urbanisation: the earliest manifestations of institutions that deal with aspects that could be described as representing the people appear in an urban context. From the protection and promotion of the interests of the urban elites grew the practice of limiting the princely manifestations of power or at least subjecting them to some control from the top down. This practice resulted in the development of a political culture in which basic values such as communication, participation and co-management played a central role. However, the final result was not entirely flawless: a tendency towards oligarchy among those in representative functions and a complex entanglement of financial interests reduced the effectiveness of the institutions, while the growth of princely power and the accumulation of coercive power in the hands of the prince was not held in check by any form of critical opposition from those who represented the people.