Crisis and Transition: Forms of Collective Housing in Brussels

Abstract

Focusing on the Brussels urban environment, this paper investigates spatial mutations produced by key critical transitions to accommodate new social and living conditions for collective purposes. Using CAD re-drawings, a systematic comparison of residential schemes identifies the evolutionary mechanism that connects manifold changes in the city and domestic spaces. This analysis defines a genealogical framework to observe how specific residential archetypes have shaped Brussels’ sociocultural identity and distinguishes contemporary housing initiatives dealing with current and future challenges. While during the 19th century, interwar, and postwar periods, spatial features evolved from individual, single-family houses to residential schemes bearing collective, egalitarian dwellings, contemporary initiatives are relevant for their experimental solutions, translating into housing design new collective ways of living. This trajectory demonstrates that collective housing provides new insights for designing future types of urban housing. Brussels contemporary housing can shed light on the fact that current crises generated by urban issues, such as demographic growth, migratory and gentrification dynamics, affordability and the COVID-19 pandemic, are accelerating the transition towards the 21st-century city. Eventually, the Belgian capital now has the opportunity to combine two crucial questions, such as typological innovation and sustainability, to successfully approach the coming transition period from social and environmental perspectives.

An Explorative Study of the Political, Economic, and Social Factors Influencing the Development of Senior Housing: A Case Study of Hong Kong

“…Finally, considering that the face-to-face interviews were conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on senior housing development have not been fully considered in the present study. In addition to the penetration of new technologies, empirical studies have also found that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant influence on housing markets in terms of vacancy rate [142], housing price [143], housing affordability [144], and housing demand [145]. Therefore, a future study in the post-COVID environment is needed to explore how political, economic, social, and technological factors could influence senior housing development in the post-pandemic era.…”

Changes of Spatial Characteristics: Socio-Cultural Sustainability in Historical Neighborhood in Beijing, China

“…On the other hand, when we go to study in detail how the transformations of physical settings could adapt local needs to achieve socio-cultural sustainability, the difficulties include how to precisely define which spatial characteristics could continually contribute to uses in public open spaces, and what spatial characteristics of urban forms should be involved, and which can fulfill the local socio-cultural needs. Therefore, the typological approach is a tool because it goes beyond the analysis of physical forms of urban transformation and studies how physical transformation adapts to the changing of needs to understand human actions [22,56]. Moudon [57] states that urban forms can be understood by investigating layout and configuration of forms and spaces in order to clarify the processes of local change-how forms and spaces are locally built and why.…”

The Role of Collective Spaces in Achieving Social Sustainability: A Comparative Approach to Enhance Urban Design

“…The outdoor collective spaces in most residential areas play a major role in social stability and unification. These are important components of the housing environment because they provide places for complimentary activities of housing units, mainly social interaction [1][2][3]. Thus, good outdoors should ensure good social relations, a good sense of belonging to the place, and a stable social life for the residents [4].…”