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Regional infrastructure project.
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The PhD-research of Greet De Block aims to complement the historiography of urbanisation by an analysis starting from the design of infrastructure networks. Approaching technological systems as culturally defined objects, the postulated oppositions between both infrastructure-urbanism and city-countryside are challenged.
Following the prevailing European historiography, the city occupies centre stage in the history of Belgian urbanisation processes. Overall spatial concepts on city development and city renovation, which interpret territorial changes by the concentric growth of primary centres, drive the common reading of the spatial structure of the territory. This approach, however, does no justice to the diffuse spatial condition of Belgium. Already in the pre-modern era, an urban intermediate form emerged that is beyond the scope of the conventional city-countryside classification. Unlike most European regions, the Flemish and Walloon countryside were early on in history embedded in dense economic networks.
To bridge this lacuna in historiography, urbanisation is approached from a cross-disciplinary perspective on infrastructure networks. As infrastructure is probably one of the only spatial components in Belgium that is planned, constructed and managed by the government, the design concepts of these technological systems are mostly based on the pursuit of socio-economic efficiency on the scale of the Nation. Thus, since these territorial ambitions are most apparent in the conception of infrastructure, the motives underlying the design can reveal the outlines of the inclusive planning of which it is part.
More specifically, the implicit spatial projects embedded in the conception of the railway, light railway, waterway and motorway network are studied.
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DE BLOCK GREET
Faculty of Engineering
Doctoral Programme in Engineering
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Project number:
3E090030
Duration of the project:
01.01.2007 - 01.01.2011
Funded research
Nederlands
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