The Art of Urbanization: Urban Questions that Made the Antwerp Agglomeration, 1907-1939

Forgotten chapter in early 20th-century European planning history, offering a fresh perspective on urbanism, grounded in a theory of urbanization

The Art of Urbanization reexamines a forgotten tradition in Belgian and European planning history, reconstructed through a longitudinal analysis of the Study Committee of the Antwerp Agglomeration (1907-1939). Against prevailing trends, Antwerp’s urban expansion was not the product of rational master planning, but evolved gradually through collective and pragmatic responses to emerging urban questions.

Drawing on a wide range of historical sources and richly illustrated, the book reconstructs how numerous sub-plans – each addressing economic, sociocultural, political and ecological needs – coalesced into the incremental components of a reasoned and dynamic urban agglomeration.

As it engages with classical concepts in urban theory and global urban history, The Art of Urbanization is presented as a generative, redistributive, reproductive, and situated worlding practice – offering a fresh perspective on urbanism that resonates in our current age of (planetary) urbanization.