Listen to the Urban Brussels #4 podcast here! Featuring Fabio Vanin (Cosmopolis), Olivia Casagrande (Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology), and Viola Castellano (University of Bologna & Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning).
The urban realm is probably the tensest context where the spatial claim can lead to complex negotiations and social frictions. Focussing on the complex socio-spatial configurations and investigating the physical, social and symbolic aspects they entail, this project aimed at investigating Brussels urban borderlands through the lenses of the European debate. Scholars and local stakeholders participated in a seminar/workshop to set the methodological framework to better grasp the features and dynamics that structure borderlands.
"The notion of borderlands has been investigated in recent years by various scholars of different disciplines and especially those focusing on Urban Studies. It is an interesting concept that allows for the investigation of places where social issues and tensions become more evident. However, we didn’t want to give to borderlands per se a negative definition... Rather, we wanted to better understand the spatial arrangements and reflect on space starting from the analysis of socio-spatial issues and unravelling how different dynamics play out in space." (Fabio Vanin)
"The main shift that we tried to make is to think about borderlands within cities instead of external borders." (Viola Castellano)
Borderland Brussels addressed ‘urban borderlands’ as an analytical key concept for collaborative research practices at the crossroad of urbanism, anthropology and criminology.
"It is worth mentioning that the methodological lenses that we applied in the project have been elaborated for many years within the LATITUDE platform as well as in other projects. The use of several methods also became possible due to the various disciplines represented in our team... Although the Covid-19 pandemic has had a severe impact on what we were able to realise within this project, we still managed to keep the multidisciplinar perspective (including social sciences, ethnographic and spatial approaches). In the end, these perspectives were brought together in an artistic installation." (Viola Castellano)
The project focused on the area around the Bruxelles – Chapelle railway station and the Brigittines neighbourhood. This particular area was selected as it presents a particular research interest due to the emergence of many urban projects and the existence of an important stock of social housing. In collaboration with local partners, the co-design of a temporary intervention—aimed at revealing conditions, patterns and spaces—was realised, and hopefully will further stimulate the public debate.
"It was extremely interesting to see how this space-occupying “object” (a textile banner, physically impeding people to pass; an artistic installation creating a physical border, ed.) revealed the conflictuous dynamics between young and old people within that particular area. The intervention acted as a tool for people to communicate but also as a means for the different reactions to be observed." (Olivia Casagrande)
The project attempted to contribute to the mapping of urban borderlands in Brussels to test some of the general goals formulated in the workshop, that way constituting a precedent that the local stakeholders will be capable of using, reproducing and transforming through their practices.
VUB project members: Fabio Vanin (Cosmopolis), Lucas Melgaço (Crime & Society) | Collaborators: Olivia Casagrande, Viola Castellano, Simon Lemutricy