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Regional infrastructure project.
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Maarten Van Acker’s research traces the regional infrastructure project as an armature of the urbanisation of Belgium since early 19th century. In this attempt to complement the history of urbanism and to gain insight in the structuring potentialities of the infrastructural project, this research conceives infrastructure as a mode of urban design. When does the infrastructural project transcend its mere technical status and can it be considered as an inclusive urbanization project? This inclusiveness is analyzed on several levels by a combination of literary study and cartographical interpretation. On one hand this study aims to trace to which extent the conception of the transport network is part of an (implicit) urbanisation goal. By mapping the political, spatial and economic motives, triggering the infrastructural project, this hypothesis is contextualised. Simultaneously the shaping of the transport trajectory, during the reaching of a consensus between the different actors, is investigated. On the other hand, the research examines the infrastructural masterplan itself, conceiving it as a synthetic spatial figure reconciling the different motives with the technical criteria. Finally a morphological feedback outlines, on a more local scale level, in which way the infrastructure project adapts to the existing landscape, interacts with the other present transport networks and to which extent the project induces new spatial conditions and typologies. The object of research is the urbanisation of three different regions and infrastructural landscapes: the Antwerp metropolitan region, the touristic Belgian coastline and the industrialized Campine region. The consecutive linear transport infrastructures of canals, train, tramway, and highway form their dissection lines.
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Project number:
3E090090
Duration of the project:
10.01.2008 - 10.01.2012
Funded research
Nederlands
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