Bruxelles comme palimpseste

Roland, Lee Christopher
(2013)

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Authors
  • Roland, Lee ChristopherUCLouvain
    author
Supervisors
Vanderburgh, David
 ;
De Herde, André
Abstract
(en) Brussels is a paradigmatic example of performative utterances inherent in the very definition of a city. Its administrative borders distill, in their incessantly contested contours, the cultural and territorial conflicts of the entire state – despite physical, historical and social realities that might have lead to other possible circumscriptions. Such inevitably provocative definitions and frameworks are nonetheless a prerequisite to any concrete intervention: without this background it is impossible to plan or design the city's development. The way to present the artifactual reality of territories here involved is thus central. The thesis reconsiders basic questions of the representation of Brussels through the building up of a graphic and cartographic database, partly referenced through a GIS, by collating spatial information from three countries (Belgium, France, Netherlands) and from the three administrative Belgian Regions (each responsible for its own territory). The database is a means of interrogating the articulations between, on the one hand, physical entities determined by topographical/pedological conditions and populations and, on the other hand, borders as geographically-situated social abstractions. More specifically, it allows us to test the validity of environmental and planning policies in view of their social consequences. To this end, an extensive reworking of existing taxonomies and cartographies is unavoidable. Data drawn from existing administrations cannot simply be juxtaposed; they must be redrawn within a consistent conceptual framework to ensure a critical reading.The proposed approach is therefore about thick description in the anthropological sense; it’s about the posture of the observer, his or her unavoidable ethical and political commitment, but also the scales, the frameworks and the performative utterances he or she invokes. Such a description attempts to present the work of naturalization and culturalization inherent in every apprehension of spatiality (including environmental practices). In doing so, it’s a prerequisite to planning. Furthermore, it represents a critical opposition to modern representations of space, insofar as these latter refuse to consider the interpenetration of social, political, physical and ecological realities.
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Roland, L. C. (2013). Bruxelles comme palimpseste. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/203649