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Publication

How to rework the city we have – Inductive planning to provide jobs and skills in old industrial areas.

Book Contribution - Chapter

This innovative planning approach aims to create jobs and develop skills for industrial and
blue collar workers. We want to activate the largely empty, unused or underused spaces in
old industrial areas of the Brussels Metropolitan area. The activation has to be done by
(1) convincing private partners (owners, developers, business owners) to rent out or use
the empty floors or underused parts of their plot and buildings,
(2) attracting businesses from outside the area to develop activities here, and
(3) promoting new entrepreneurship so new start-up businesses root in this area.

This requires a good knowledge of what happens on the field, understanding how the
potential investors and partners think, and starts form a deep respect for the people that are
still working and investing in the area.
From our first experience in the Brussels northern Area, we learned the following:
• Many spaces inside buildings are vacant
• The normal market for renting large buildings does not attract new strong
enterpreneurs, but only residual uses
• Many buildings and plots are kept empty, because of soil contamination. In most
cases the contamination does not prevent a temporary use.
• Business owners, investors that are present in the area, do not know each other.
• Potential collaboration is often not seen by investors.

Our project wants to figure out in real conditions what this intermediate or interface actually
consists of. We will explore different possible frameworks within our territory. The first step
however is to get in contact with existing companies, by producing new territorial knowledge,
doing interviews, organising workshops, and discover the urban landscape by walking
through it in small groups.

Two municipalities will take the lead, helped by regular programs in Flanders and Brussels.
Scientific support will be provided by the two Brussels universities.
Book: ISOCARP-OAPA Conference 2017
Number of pages: 12
Publication year:2016
Accessibility:Open