Activity 9: Conclusion
Brussels, the city of traffic jams?
Activity 9: Conclusion
What should you take away from this section?
As you have seen, Brussels has long benefited from its location in the heart of a European megalopolis (the famous "Blue Banana" of Roger Brunet) and close to the major industrial zones. In the 19th century, this enabled Brussels to become Belgium's leading industrial city in terms of the number of workers in the sector.
From the 1970s onwards, however, Brussels was characterised by a process of de-industrialisation. Employment in this sector moved to peripheral areas which allowed for the construction of larger production areas on the ground floor. In addition, the redistribution of labour on a global scale led to the relocation of industrial sites abroad, mainly to the Mediterranean region, Asia and Eastern Europe. In response, Brussels' industries started to change the nature of their activities, focusing on sectors with high added value (such as pharmaceuticals), in order to remain competitive while reducing the number of workers.
Nevertheless, after this difficult period, Brussels has economically revived since the end of the 20th century. This new vitality is particularly based on the development of the tertiary sector and the increasing interconnection of global networks. Nowadays, 90% of the added value produced in Brussels comes from the service and trade sectors.
From an international point of view, Brussels is economically rather atypical. Due to its small size, it has few corporate headquarters compared to other large capitals. However, this observation is dampened if one looks at the metropolitan scale. A number of large company headquarters and world-class research and development centres can be found in peripheral areas.
It is also thanks to hosting a growing number of national and international institutions that Brussels is a city of global importance today. Moreover, it is the city with the largest number of embassies in the world.
However, as you have now seen, the economic development linked to this particular context has been accompanied by a considerable increase in unemployment and social inequality since the 1980s. There are many reasons for this: the reduction in the number of low-skilled jobs (which led to the exclusion of many Brussels residents from the labour market), the increasing precariousness of these jobs, but also the very high spatial concentration of people in difficulty within the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods of the capital.
You then discovered how the redistribution of the wealth created in Brussels benefits the other regions of the country and influences the mobility both in and around the Brussels-Capital Region. Brussels attracts a large number of workers who do not live there. Almost 345,000 commuters from the other two regions travel to the capital on a daily basis, generating the famous traffic jams you see during rush hours. More specifically, 31% of people working in Brussels actually live in the Flemish Region, while 17.6% of them live in the Walloon Region.
As such, mobility management both in and towards Brussels has become a major political, social, economic and environmental issue. Meanwhile, the development of alternatives to the car is complicated by the partial dismantlement of the rail network, as well as the institutional fragmentation of the country and the difficulties of coordination between the different levels of government concerned. Hence, the Belgian State still offers tax benefits to companies that provide their employees with "company cars", thereby hampering the development of sustainable mobility alternatives.
In Brussels, this problem is certainly not anecdotal. In 2016, there were about 650,000 company cars in Belgium, while 27% of car commuters in and towards Brussels consisted of people driving such vehicles. As you have read, their reduction would lead to a very sharp decline in the traffic congestion of Brussels.
Lastly, you have discovered how the Good Move plan, launched in 2019 by the Brussels-Capital Region, aims to reduce car traffic congestion by encouraging mobilities that are less dependent on the private car.
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