The Vernacular Landscape Of Asbeek

The Vernacular Landscape Of Asbeek Landscape - 02

Divya Chand Master in Urban Studies, Cohort-2

Key Elements Asbeek is located on route E40, between Brussels and Aalst. Although it has an agricultural history dating back to before the Roman times, today its spatial reality presents a complex mismatch from the standard land-use maps. While it has characteristics of an urban fringe, agriculture, housing, and forestry, the land does not solely belong to any single one of these traditional categories.

With a sweeping look at Asbeek, it can be seen that the landscape is dominated by horse meadows and traces of forests. There are some farms but multiple single-family houses, scattered around. The impact of the proximity to a big city like Brussels, as well as the E40, manifests in most of residents being daily commuters, working elsewhere, and not agrarian workers as one might expect from the plans. With the closest railway station 6km away in Asse, the community here is heavily car dependent. This can be seen in the cars in the garages of each house. The countryside and open space are quite easily accessible by roads and other infrastructure, that have existed since a long time. These break up the open spaces in Asbeek and limit farming possibilities.

Urban influence has caused multiple changes in this rural landscape. In land considered good quality for production, new non agrarian uses have come up such as breeding of hobby horses and domestic garden sprawl. Former farm buildings have also been repurposed. Still, possibly as a response to these changes, there can be also seen a rise of farming cooperatives and community supported agriculture.

Graphic by author

Garden sprawl

Almost all the houses in Asbeek have an attached open space to them. The proliferation of domesticated open space is increasingly referred to as gardensprawl. “The phenomenon of garden expansion is observed in the rural part of Flanders facilitated by the Agricultural Holdings Act. This law states that landowners are able to revoke up to 0.2 ha of the leased land to be used for family goals like a garden or playground, if this land is connected to his or her dwelling�. Since Asbeek was a rural area, this has been possible as the houses are not very densely packed and interstitial spaces are left open as private gardens. Even though its quite small in scale, these multifunctional open spaces seem to be important green facets of urbanization, covering a substantial part of land. Though not productive, they deliver several ecosystem services.

Agricultural land here is spatially fragmented and interwoven with or in close proximity to other functions like housing, infrastructure and industry. The urban effect has added a consumption function to the open spaces, making them attractive for more residential dwellings, to act as buffers from the ill effects of dense urbanisation. In a land-use based plan, categorising garden spaces as agricultural or residential would both be incorrect and blur out the nuances of open space that exists in Asbeek and similar places in Flanders.

Horsification

Many pastures in Asbeek have horses kept for leisure and not contributing to any kind of production, this phenomenon has come to be called: the horsification of the landscape. While some of these pastures are smaller in scale, containing mainly hobby horses used for recreational purposes, there have also developed many large stud breeding facilities that raise horses to be traded in the international markets. Since these horses are characterized by large and muscular appearances, the stud farms use large fences impacting the openness of the surrounding landscape.

These stud farms are generally in spaces that used to be for agricultural production previously. Either these lands are bought out, or farmers diversify their activities to compensate for the reduced profitability of traditional agricultural production. While in effect these land uses are not agricultural, planning documents still consider them as so. Contrarily, these limit the possibilities for farmers to buy lands and leads to increasing land prices.

While these commercial and recreational functions deviate from the ideal rural and agrarian countryside, at the same time these horses are protecting the openness of the open space, amidst the pressures of peri-urban development, although in a scattered way.

References Vanempten, E. (2018). Observing interfaces: treasure hunt in the field. In V. Dewaelheyns, H. Leinfelder, & H. Gulinck (editors), Challenging the boxes.

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Bomans, K. (2011). Revisiting dynamics and values of open space, the case of Flanders. [PhD dissertation] Leuven: KU Leuven – Faculteit BioIngenieurswetenschappen.

Dewaelheyns, V., Rogge, E., & Gulinck, H. (2014). Putting domestic gardens on the agenda using empirical spatial data: The case of Flanders.

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