Research Greet De Block

Abstract

In landscape design and urbanism literature there is currently no conceptual debate on the financial and political context in which urban nature is developed. This is remarkable, as the development of such green spaces is often justified as 'compensation' for environmental destruction elsewhere. The development of compensation landscapes as a socio-spatial project is still largely ignored by landscape designers and cognate fields, although it has a considerable spatial impact on territories worldwide. This research project will test the hypothesis that compensation landscapes are the result of specific historical interactions between the state, civil society, landscape and urban designers, planners, and ecologists. By studying case studies in Brussels, London, and Berlin, I want to get a grip on compensation landscapes throughout Europe. This project combines 1. a study of the alliances of actors linked to compensation, 2. mapping the geographies of compensation landscapes, and 3. an analysis of the specific design and ecological interventions in compensation projects in the three case study areas. By building an analytical framework to assess and understand compensation landscapes, this postdoctoral research will offer insight into ecological urbanization processes and open a debate on the spatial consequences of contemporary compensation logics.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Block Greet
• Fellow: Danneels Koenraad

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The turn of the 19th century saw the dawn of a welfare revolution across Western Europe, in which great public investments and state interventions were made in what was increasingly considered to be vital public goods. No other Western European country adopted the values and principles of the welfare state model more profoundly than Sweden. In terms of social policy, Stockholm City set the standards of development in Swedish society, where welfare imperatives permeated all corners of cultural, social, and political life – creating what Stockholm's councilmen dubbed a welfare state-Stockholm. Within the welfare metropolis, regional transit integration provided both the necessary infrastructural scaffolding for regional coordination of welfare initiatives, as well as an institutional leverage point for the administrative upscaling of the Swedish service democracy from local to metropolitan level. Yet, efforts to understand the materialization of the Swedish post-war welfare ideology have focused almost exclusively on modernist housing and neighborhood policies while ignoring public transportation. Rarely has public transportation been explored as a welfare service in and of itself. As a result, transport services remain auxiliary in historical analysis of welfare distribution, the shaping of modern citizenship, as well as mechanisms of (sub)urban in- and exclusion. This research places public transportation at the heart of the welfare debate. In the backdrop of the infrastructural turn in the social sciences, it focuses on the political decisions and socio-spatial outcomes of the post-war coordination and standardization of modern transit services across Greater Stockholm region. While network integration has typically been considered as an egalitarian and redistributive social policy, the aim of this research is to explore whether or not, and to what degree, transport integration exacerbated regional disparities and contributed to suburban exclusion across Greater Stockholm region. To do so, this research looks beyond dominant rhetorical goals of egality, solidarity, and universalization that underpinned the politics of the Swedish welfare ideology, and follows the premise that transport policy and planning provides more nuanced answers to the highly moral questions of who was included and who was excluded from life in a modern welfare society.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Block Greet
• Fellow: Klaassen André

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Historical maps are not only unique heritage objects but also containers of precious data on the evolution of the cultural and natural landscape. From the 16th century onwards, in present-day Belgium, handwritten local maps were produced in great numbers, followed by the famous Ferraris and printed Vandermaelen map series, as well as large numbers of large or medium scale cadastral maps. What is left of this unique heritage is dispersed over public and private collections, making users of digital historical maps struggle to use these maps to their full potential. Artemis is convinced that this wealth of detailed maps and map series has great potential to investigate landscapes, their evolution over time and their possible future(s) - a potential that could be used in varying fields of research such as Historical Geography, Ecology (biodiversity and water management) and Spatial Planning. Artemis aims to process, digitally enrich, make available and valorize well-defined corpora of both handwritten and printed maps before ca. 1880, using state of the art extraction techniques - as automated localization, toponym recognition and (landscape) feature extraction - with in finality, publication in a IIIF-enabled Linked Open Data Research Infrastructure. The project joins forces of both the University of Antwerp and Ghent University, backed up by the main Belgian map collection holders (ARA/KBR/NGI), focussing on the Scheldt River Valley which connects Antwerp to Ghent.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Jongepier Iason
• Co-promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Hacigüzeller Piraye
• Co-promoter: Soens Tim
• Co-promoter: Temmerman Stijn

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The success of the 15-minute city is tightly linked to its implementation in the hyper-connected cities most suited to adopt it, but a sustainable urban transition requires tackling other forms of European urbanisation, namely the extensive peri-urban areas where many people live and work. In these areas, spatial morphologies and networks are not necessarily ready to receive 15-minute city models and governments and communities are not necessarily aligned with their principles. However, interventions to improve quality of life, proximity and accessibility are sorely needed. InPUT advances this effort, by analysing distinct peri-urban types and envisioning place-specific 15-minute settings that fit these diverse contexts. To achieve that, the project moves beyond considering only spatial aspects (TOD, functions, networks) to also examine social aspects, namely governance capacities, which influence investments and priorities, and aspirations of inhabitants, which determine which elements constitute 'their' 15-minute city and the desirability of the transformations. Based on a selection of peri-urban areas in four countries, InPUT establishes, together with local stakeholders, a typological catalogue of functional arrangements, mobility networks, governance dynamics and community experiences. That knowledge is then used to co-design place-appropriate spatial visions and strategic transformations enabling 15-minute settings.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Oosterlynck Stijn

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Recent literature in urban studies tends to identify and define the city as an ever more complex and hybrid reality, referring to the urban as something 'splintered', 'assembled' and 'imagined' while seeking refuge in new concepts and catchphrases like 'post'-city, 'non'-city, or 'ex'-urban. Our collective research initiative will transcend this not by churning out even more new theories and concepts, but by analysing the very activity of defining the city as a historical process and practice. To that end, we will concentrate on four concrete, complementary domains, in which the definition of cities is at stake by nature. By focusing on (1) 'suburbanisation', (2) 'territoriality', and (3) 'urban citizenship' we examine the existence and meaningfulness of physical, social and imagined boundaries in defining the urban and urbanity. The theme of 'knowledge' (4) adds a reflexive layer by analysing the long term interconnections between the urban reality and knowledge formation – including knowledge on the city itself.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Munck Bert
• Co-promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Co-promoter: Oosterlynck Stijn
• Co-promoter: Van Damme Ilja

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

TOD-IS-RUR focuses on Transit Oriented Development (TOD), conceiving public transport as a backbone for socially Inclusive and environmentally Sustainable urbanisation in European Rural-Urban Regions (RURs). If Europe is to make a transition to inclusive and sustainable urbanisation, this extension of TOD to RURs is essential, as most Europeans live in RURs, not just in urban cores. TOD-IS-RUR sets up an interdisciplinary, international and intersectoral network to analyse, develop and test-case innovative approaches countering sprawl in RURs by bringing in expertise from urban studies and drawing on a wide-range of European contexts. The 9 Beneficiaries and 12 Partner Organisations create a unique platform for 10 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs), providing expert-level training in analysing and improving TOD for RURs.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Oosterlynck Stijn
• Co-promoter: Vanoutrive Thomas
• Co-promoter: Verhetsel Ann

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The research is positioned at the nexus of urban history and urban studies, with a focus on infrastructure. Infrastructure is approached as driving force of socio-spatial development, with projects structured along two main research lines: (1) technological design: planning intentions, material politics, and agendas of de/reterritorialization inscribed into the design of infrastructure and associated mobility policies; (2) effects of technology: mobility flows, socio-economic processes, and landscape transformation. The research is highly interdisciplinary, linking urban history with Science and Technology Society studies, urban design, political geography, and landscape studies. Moreover, research on 19th and 20th -century infrastructure-urbanization mechanisms is mobilised to provide insight in current urban condition and related urban theories and practices.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Block Greet
• Fellow: De Block Greet

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The research project aims to develop novel understandings of the interaction between generic, urban TOD models and the pre-existing social and spatial contexts of RURs in which TOD projects are undertaken. The project focuses on (i) who is developing specific TOD projects for which reasons and with which social and landscape impacts; (ii) frictions between the pre-existing social and landscape context of RURs and the imaginaries of TOD development plans. Cases examined are TODs in the RUR of Antwerp and Stockholm/Uppsala.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Vanoutrive Thomas

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Both in contemporary literature as in historical research, the arrival of travellers and migrants in a city has been described as a critical moment. A lack of knowledge about the urban context they arrived in as well as a lack of trustworthy information made them vulnerable for abuse. This project will focus on the arrival in the city as a crucial moment for newcomers to orientate into the urban fabric and on spaces of accommodation as crucial locations of encounter for different actors intending to channel mobile people. This project will study spaces of accommodation as key hub in the infrastructural complexes of arrival within the urban environment, offering space where people got connected and could decide to settle, find a job, or to prepare for onward travel, or conversely, where people were deceived and hindered in aspired mobility trajectories. It will reveal how these places functioned as funnel places between the global flows and the local urban environment, where the practices of and conflicts over the movement of people were constructed and contested, impacting both upon the mobility trajectories of people and the socio-spatial development of the city. The objectives are to explore 1) the changing roles and functions of these spaces of accommodation within the complex arrival infrastructure and the urban environment in the period 1850-1930, characterised by a strong increase and democratisation of migration and mobility, but also by growing concerns and moral panics about mobile people; 2) and to identify causes of these evolutions by emphasizing changing interactions but also tensions and conflicts between different actors and organisations trying to influence mobility patterns. Its results will not only enhance our understanding in the ways these spaces of accommodation were used to enhance or obstruct mobility. It will also bring a fluid population into the picture which has remained concealed by the dominant view on migrants who settled and were registered, as well as bridge the gap between migration, mobility, and urban studies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Co-promoter: De Block Greet
• Fellow: Segerink Jasper

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has come to great prominence within contemporary planning policies in Europe and North-America. As a model, it calls for an integration of transport and urban planning, forwarding public transport as the backbone for urban development in order to curtail sprawl while still facilitating today's mobile society. Yet, TOD research and practice are based on a normative approach dividing urban from rural qualities and preferring static radial-concentric models to dynamic network-urbanisation relations. Consequently, current TOD analysis and planning are limited to a radius around the station to be filled in with compact urban typologies and homogeneous densities. This normative frame leads to problematic, a-contextual analyses of, and interventions in, relations between rural-urban places and mobility. Beyond the dots in TODs will contribute to a sustainable planning approach in networked rural-urban places by developing an analytical frame focusing on dynamic relations instead of static modeling as well as producing knowledge on rural-urban places apt to work with hybridity instead of omitting it. More specifically, the research will analyse interactions between rail network development, commuting, and processes of rural-urban urbanisation in a long term perspective. The research project will develop a historical analysis of site-specific socio-spatial development in one of the most sprawled territories in Europe – Flanders – in order to further knowledge on heterogeneous and dynamic network-urbanisation relations, unravelling a reality that is far more complex than homogeneous density dots and circular growth models. By reconstructing relations between rail, commuting, and urbanisation, combining quantitative and qualitative methods from transport geography, urban planning and urban history, the project opens up ways for dynamic and place-specific planning strategies beyond current dots in TODs.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Verhetsel Ann
• Fellow: Schepers Ingrid

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The main goal of the project is to evaluate the historical collaboration that has taken place between states on projects associated with European Integration since the 19th century. This project stresses the need for a European scope and the benefits of adopting international views in research and education.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Block Greet

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Education Project
• Research Project

Abstract

Today, landscape design plays an increasingly important role in ecological development and infrastructure planning, leading to a disciplinary realignment between landscape designers, ecologists and engineers. Current research and design proposals on 'metropolitan landscapes' in Belgium tie in with international trends in design, based on two main concepts: (1) a balance between 'the urban' and 'the natural' and (2) the potential of landscape design to act as an integrative instrument for several disciplines and experts. However, these concepts are not new. This PhD project aims at mobilizing a historical understanding of the role of landscape design in relation to: (1) a complex field of knowledge production, policy making and planning and (2) shifting conceptions of city and nature in Belgium since the early 20th century. In doing so, the research adds academic and indeed historical profundity to current design discourse as well as contributes to recent developments in urban history. The research follows an inductive method: an original contribution to existing historiography and theory in the field is built up through case study analysis. The PhD is based on three case studies which allow to explore shifting alliances between designers, scientists, engineers and policy makers in Belgium between 1900 and today, with Brussels as geographical focus: (1) ca. 1900-1929: biologist Jean Massart and landscape designer/urban planner Louis Van der Swaelmen, who developed an 'ethologic' view on landscape design and a 'sociobiologist' theory on urban planning; (2) 1951-1989: landscape designer René Pechère and the Service of the Green Plan, reconciling landscape design and engineering within the conception of the Belgian territory as a garden; (3) 1974-2016: biologist Paul Duvigneaud and the Brussels Agglomeration, developing the scientific field of urban ecology and bringing it into practice in designs of parks, corridors and networks for the Brussels Region. Following a literature review, these case studies are subject to a network, discourse as well as design analysis, with the following questions in mind: In which (inter)national networks did landscape designers operate? Which discourses on the urban and the natural were developed? In what sense were terms as 'sociobiology', 'biotechnics' and 'metabolism' used and how did their meaning evolve? How did the alliance with ecology and infrastructure affect the design and vice versa? The case study research is based on published sources as well as archival research, in the two most recent cases complemented by interviews. The PhD research develops a new methodological approach charting transformation of landscape design through its shifting relations with other disciplines. Moreover, it offers new perspectives on on-going academic discussions, in both urban history and urban design, and uncovers a new body of archival and other sources. The project is especially innovative because: (1) it approaches ecology and engineering from a landscape design perspective, which will introduce a new way of studying disciplines and fields of knowledge that have until now very often been studied separately; (2) it introduces ideological, sociocultural and aesthetical perspectives in a hitherto technical discussion; (3) it will set a crucial step in the development of landscape design history in Belgium as an academic discipline.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Notteboom Bruno
• Promoter: Schrijver Lara
• Co-promoter: De Block Greet
• Fellow: Danneels Koenraad

Research team(s)

• Henry van de Velde

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Internationally, landscape and nature/ecology are foregrounded as a new ground to recalibrate the discipline of spatial planning. However, in Flanders there is a problematic tension between landscape and nature policy, translated in planning strategies based on either static zoning or on a dynamic systemic development; a divide standing in the way of this new integrated conception of spatial planning. As first step in bridging the divide, the STIMPRO-project aims at contextualizing the tension by placing it in a historical perspective. The current, a-historical reading of nature and landscape policy gives way to a one-dimensional focus on the technical and scientific approach in planning theory and practice, which obscures an in-depth understanding of the challenges at stake, both environmental and social. The project examines a key period of formalization and conception of planning instruments (1970-2000), in which a legal and institutional framework for both landscape and nature policy were developed. It focuses on two paradigmatic cases, in which crucial issues and questions on landscape and nature conception crystallize: 1) the Landscape Atlas (Landschapsatlas, LA), based on an assessment of traditional landscapes and a rationale of zoning; 2) the Green Main Structure (Groene Hoofdstructuur, GHS), based on a network and development strategy. Starting from this case studies the project aims at: 1) gaining insight in the concepts of conservation and development in nature and landscape policy in Flanders and uncovering the networks of actors and ideas involved and 2) tracing the ideological arguments, sociocultural motives, conflicts and power relations underlying the scientific/technocratic rationale. Methodologically, the assembly of networks and narratives is grounded in Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory and Maarten Hajer's and John Dryzek's work on environmental discourses. The research is based on three types of primary sources: 1) individual interviews with a preselected group of 14 actors that played a primary role in the development of the LA and GHS in government administrations, research institutions, and preservation committees; 2) archives of the actors, institutions and associations under study; 3) the reports of the Scientific Conferences for Greening (1975-84). The feasibility of the research is ensured by the pre-selection of the actors and literature by the promoters and the targeted way of addressing the archives. The project contributes to the research activities of the Henry van de Velde research group (HVDV), and more specifically to the cluster Heritage and Resilience, by initiating a long-term research line on landscape history, design and policy, which inscribes heritage studies in a present-day development perspective. The STIMPRO-project is a first step of a PhD project that will be set up by the promoters (FWO, IWT) as well as prepares the foundation for possible research funded by governmental administrations. The cooperation between promoter Bruno Notteboom and co-promoter Greet De Block of the Centre for Urban History is essential for the interdisciplinary approach of this research and makes it possible to contribute to two frontline research domains of the University of Antwerp: Ecology and Sustainable Development, and Urban History and Contemporary Urban Policy.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Notteboom Bruno
• Co-promoter: De Block Greet

Research team(s)

• Henry van de Velde

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In a time of rapid urbanization solid long-term perspectives on the many environmental, social, economic or political challenges of urbanity are urgently needed. Uniting urban history, sociology, environmental studies and digital humanities, GIStorical Antwerp II turns the historical city into a digital lab which provides an answer to this need. For 8 snapshots between 1584 and 1984 it offers dynamic social maps including every household in the entire city of Antwerp. Construction combines innovative ways of crowd-sourcing and time-efficient spatial and text-mining methodologies (Linear Referencing, Named Entity Recognition). The result is a GIS-environment which not only allows a micro-level view of 500 years of urban development, but more importantly allows an immediate spatial and social contextualization of a sheer unlimited number of other datasets, both those realized through 30 years of research on Antwerp and the mass of structured and unstructured digital 'big data'. For both the applicants and the international research community a completely new type of longitudinal research on urban inequalities – from income over housing quality to pollution – becomes feasible.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Soens Tim
• Co-promoter: Blondé Bruno
• Co-promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Co-promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Loots Ilse
• Co-promoter: Oosterlynck Stijn
• Co-promoter: Stabel Peter
• Co-promoter: Van Damme Ilja

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Recent literature in ecological urbanism shows that design strategies are increasingly combining infrastructural design with ecological interventions to address an imminent ecological crisis within the context of accelerating urbanization. Merging technological function with natural structures, the design of these ecological infrastructures centers on sophisticated data collecting, rather than responding to socio-political demands or taking inspiration from historical precedents. Political ecology, on the other hand, mainly focuses on the socio-political effects of technonatural intervention, or in-/exclusion of social actors in the planning process, while paying limited attention to the design of ecological infrastructure and the inscribed spatial motives. By delving into 'historical precedents', in which ecological infrastructures were conceived as mode of urban design, the research will add a design perspective to political ecology as well as socio-political context to urban design discourse. Recent design culture will be analyzed vis-à-vis historical concepts that dealt with technology and environmental control within a context of uncertainty and rapid change. Besides the innovative methodology linking past, present and future projection in a way that contributes to both history and current urban theory, as well as to design practice, the project has a decidedly interdisciplinary focus. In addition to tying together the disciplines of ecological urbanism and political ecology in a timely bind breaking new ground, on a broader level, the project relates technology, space and society, and with that the domains of urban history, urbanism, planning, engineering, political geography and Science Technology and Society studies (STS) as it traces sociospatial motives inscribed in technonatural projects.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Soens Tim
• Fellow: Elkin Rosetta

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project represents a research contract awarded by the University of Antwerp. The supervisor provides the Antwerp University research mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions stipulated by the university.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Block Greet
• Fellow: De Block Greet

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Recent literature in urban studies tends to identify and define the city as an ever more complex and hybrid reality, referring to the urban as something 'splintered', 'assembled' and 'imagined' while seeking refuge in new concepts and catchphrases like 'post'-city, 'non'-city, or 'ex'-urban. Our collective research initiative will transcend this not by churning out even more new theories and concepts, but by analysing the very activity of defining the city as a historical process and practice. To that end, we will concentrate on four concrete, complementary domains, in which the definition of cities is at stake by nature. By focusing on (1) 'suburbanisation', (2) 'territoriality', and (3) 'urban citizenship' we examine the existence and meaningfulness of physical, social and imagined boundaries in defining the urban and urbanity. The theme of 'knowledge' (4) adds a reflexive layer by analysing the long term interconnections between the urban reality and knowledge formation – including knowledge on the city itself.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Munck Bert
• Co-promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Co-promoter: Oosterlynck Stijn
• Co-promoter: Van Damme Ilja

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project