Activity 10: Conclusion
There's a bit of Brussels for everyone!
Activity 10: Conclusion
What should you take away from this section?
This section gave you a quick overview of the diversity of landscapes, activities and social groups that characterise Brussels. You have also seen how housing, green spaces and socio-economic activities are unevenly distributed throughout the territory of the Brussels-Capital Region, in very different proportions and forms depending on whether or not you are close to the centre or the periphery, to the west or the east of the city.
You saw that to understand this centre-periphery gradient and this east-west opposition, you had to go back to the origins of the city and more particularly to the geographical configuration of the Senne valley. Indeed, the latter initially determined the location of political and socio-economic activities and influenced the social division of the Brussels population. Brussels is therefore a highly polarised city geographically, economically and socially. We can speak of a real urban mosaic.
Since its origins, the city has undergone changes in its many different districts. The processes of social relegation in the Brussels area have resulted in particular in the concentration of underprivileged populations in the industrial districts in the centre and west of the city. After the Second World War, these neighbourhoods continued to attract low-income migrant populations, who settled in the former working-class neighbourhoods but also in parts of the city abandoned by the middle classes, whose housing was divided into smaller units.
Moreover, Brussels, like many other cities, has been affected over the last few decades by major transformations in certain working-class neighbourhoods, due to the arrival of more privileged social groups who are rehabilitating old housing and introduce different lifestyles and consumption patterns. This gentrification has contributed to the transformation of certain working-class neighbourhoods by increasing the cost of real estate, which makes it all the more difficult for low-income households to have access to housing.
You saw that this great diversity can be found even in the practices of the city. The users who meet there have their own perceptions of it, depending on where they live and work.
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