Anticiperende technieken, stedenbouw en verstedelijking: Een historisch-geografische analyse van technieken van calculatie en cartografie in België sinds het begin van de 19de eeuw.

Most research on urbanization processes and policy is based on the rural/urban distinction as well as on a traditional understanding of scale, thus focussing on the radial-concentric growth of primary centres surrounded by a hinterland, embedded in strong national structures. This approach is however not consistent with the historical and current hybrid rural-urban landscape and shifting dynamics between sociospatial entities. Complementary to formal concepts on the city, the territorial organization of public works or sociological, economic and engineering rationales guiding these projects are crucial to an understanding of urbanization as these are one of the few spatial components that are systematically planned by (an interplay of) public authorities. Although these rationales or more specifically anticipatory techniques of calculation and cartography have received attention in the domain of Science, Technology and Society (STS), there is little systematic scholarship on the application of techniques in policy; more importantly, the relation between techniques, space and society or the description, forecast and organization of space to guide societal transformations has rarely been the object of research. Besides adding a spatial perspective to STS, the research contributes to both the history of urbanization and current planning theory and practice by: revealing the rationales underlying rural-urban landscapes; showing the impact as well as socio-economic heterogeneity of large-scale public works-urbanization regimes; and by qualifying the organization of the territory as a political project and the nation state as taken for granted political power.

Trefwoorden:Urbanization, Engineering, Anticipatory techniques, Rural-urban hybrids, Territory, Sociotechnical systems, Infrastructure, Sociospatial theory.