Designing Spatial Networks in the Dispersed City

Urban environments are under constant transformation, responding to timely socio-economic challenges. Likewise, Flanders’ dispersed urbanization and its supporting infrastructure is currently facing a number of complex urban questions. Here, a business-as-usual scenario fails to meet the needs of a growing population in a sustainable way, resulting in numerous unwanted effects such as traffic congestion, flooding, impending electricity shortages and ecological decrease. These crises, directly or indirectly linked to supportive infrastructural networks, have the potential to give rise to a new urban form: think of the Great Stink, a hygienic crisis in nineteenth-century London, urging the construction of a large-scale sewerage network underground, which also created a new system of public spaces above ground. Considering crises as leverage to reimagine urban environments, a global challenge such as a pandemic offers the opportunity to imagine long-term local change. In the particular case of Flanders, the current crisis uncovers the potential of existing spatial networks to shape a sustainable constellation of dispersed urbanization.

Spatial networks can be considered the ‘lifelines’ or carriers of urbanity, as they support the way societal processes such as living and working are organized and vice versa. One can distinguish different types of infrastructural networks in the Flemish dispersed urbanization: territorial (rivers and creeks), mobilizing (canals, roads, and railways) and servicing (energy distribution, food production, sewage). It is clear that the carrying capacity of each of these networks is currently being exceeded and a tipping point has been reached. Infrastructural networks are either lacking (such as the envisaged construction of sewage), in constant need of renewal (such as rapidly obsolete road infrastructure) or simply given up (such as demolishing power plants). This presents the choice of either limiting the exploited capacity of the existing networks and opt for a more selective infill of the territory or, more fundamentally, of rethinking the existing networks and thus also the reciprocal relations between urbanization (human) and the territory (land) in a resilient way.

By starting from the inherent qualities of dispersed urbanization, one can start to imagine a number of exemplary, nodal interventions that are capable of addressing urban questions in a multiscalar way (addressing global challenges in local conditions) and/or interdisciplinary way (linking different types of networks). They are part of the collective layer of infrastructure, as an entry to rethink the reciprocal relations between human and land and thus inducing long-lasting effects of incidental crises. The aim of this exercise is not to introduce full-fledged solutions, but rather to provide a critical design reflection acknowledging the inherent potential of dispersion and exploring the possibilities to shape a more resilient and sustainable future constellation of the dispersed city.

SOPHIE LEEMANS (1996) obtained a Master’s in Architecture at KU Leuven Sint-Lucas Brussels campus where she graduated summa cum laude and was laureate of the Master’s programme. Her thesis ‘Adaptive Architecture and Flood Permitting Cities’ emphasized the positive impact of water infrastructure on daily life and received several awards. After gaining practical experience in the Berlin-based architecture and urban planning office TSPA, she is now a full-time PhD researcher at the Department of Architecture of KU Leuven. Her research is part of the All City/All Land Research Cell and focuses on the design potential of infrastructural networks to shape a more qualitative and sustainable dispersed urbanization in the Eurometropolis region (Kortrijk – Tournai – Lille).

... as a base for micro-natural reserves shielded from future human intervention to enhance both biodiversity and flood resilience

... with small-scale water cleaning facilities such as reed beds to prevent pollution of the natural brook system and enhance independence from centralised service networks

... through making use of the inherent decentralised productive potential of relatively large gardens adjacent to dwellings to enhance food security and sustainability

... through permeable roadway as part of a regenerative strategy to (re)connect and restore soft tissue by making connections on a local scale ... as visible infrastructure raising awareness of its impact and topping up infrastructure with collective added value instead of a mere supportive, technical intervention ... to absorb evolving societal conditions and at the same time meet incidental spatial requirements in times of systemic shock and fulfil the adequate, needed function