Situated at the heart of Northern Europe, Brussels hosts European institutions, powerful lobbying networks, and a thriving creative scene, giving the impression of a natural convergence point. Yet in reality, it is both a place of dispersion and consensus. Brussels is just one of the 19 municipalities of the capital region, part of a country with three regions—Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels—and four official languages.
The city is a study in contrasts. Sociologically, it accommodates both the ultra-wealthy and tax exiles (including some of the 70,000 French nationals living just across the border), while over a third of its residents live below the poverty line. Urbanistically, its streets alternate between elegant townhouses and mansions, whose ornate façades broadcast “the legitimacy of the 19th-century financial and industrial elite,” and sudden 20-story concrete monoliths. This tension is captured in the phenomenon known as “Brusselization,” a symptom of laissez-faire regulation amid real estate speculation, giving rise to the notoriously Brussels-specific insult, “Espèce d’architecte!”
Brussels embodies all of this “at once.” But is it really all in the same space? Yes and no. Space here is not only geographic or territorial—it is cultural and mental, shaped by communities interacting along linguistic lines. And perhaps this very complexity and institutional fragmentation contains the seeds of its own strategies: ways to bypass stagnation and, ultimately, mobilize the city’s real estate creatively.
This study trip, designed for the third cohort of IDHEAL participants, uncovers agile, adventurous approaches by actors striving to maintain the region’s remarkable social and functional diversity. These include widespread temporary occupation, emphyteusis, circularity, negotiation, barter, institutional mobility, neighborhood contracts, project rooms, shared visions, and more. From surrealism to situationism, the distance between imagination and action in Brussels can be surprisingly short—this was the guiding hypothesis for a study of mobility strategies in a country that appears flat only at first glance.
A study trip and journal conceived by AHA (Annabelle Hagmann, Maud Yvon).
