The Belgian municipal typology

In the year 2001 the Belgian statistical office has executed a census titled the social-economic questionnaire. More than with previous censuses (where the goal was essentially counting the population in order to determine the number of seats for parliament per district for example, and which is since 1989 executed by the national register (Rijksregister)) the 2001 census aimed at collecting many demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the population at a low territorial level. Other aspects such as health, satisfaction and quality of the living environment, education, habitation and mobility were included in the census (Van Hecke et al. 2009).

The census creates a unique and irreplaceable source of information of the Belgian population. It not only collects a lot of information, but also provides this up until the municipal and neighbourhood level. The 2001 version is especially important for regional analysis (municipality and neighbourhoods).

Based on this census several monographs have been written on various subjects, as health, households and commuting. The monographs have been created to analyse the results of the census thoroughly (Van Hecke et al. 2009).

These monographs are the result of collaboration between several governmental institutes; Algemene Directie Statistiek (Directorate-general Statistics and Economic Information), Economische Informatie van de FOD Economie (FPS Economy SMEs, Self-Employed and Energy, the former National Institute of Statistics) and the Federaal Wetenschapsbeleid (Belgian Science Policy Office) who finances the analysis of the data and guides the project in the context of the ATLAS project which is concerned with the valorisation of the 2001 social-economic questionnaire (Van Hecke et al. 2009).

The actual writing of the monographs has been entrusted to several university research groups, which were selected in cooperation with foreign experts. In the overseeing of the scientific context of the monographs the Federaal Wetenschapsbeleid (Belgian Science Policy Office) has been aided by

employees of the Federaal Planbureau (Federal planning bureau) and Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten (Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts) (Van Hecke et al.

2009).

Of the several monographs written the one on “Settlements and City Regions in Urbanized Belgium (Woonkernen en Stadsgewesten in een Verstedelijkt België/Noyaux d’habitat et Régions urbaines dans une Belgique urbanisée) is the most interesting from a territorial typology point of view.

Whereas the researchers acknowledge that urban regions are very dynamic and that establishing a statistical border is in principle rejected, they do elaborate here on an urban typology of Belgium, which is an adaptation of the typologies of 1981 and 1991. They indicate that delimiting the urban regions as a technical snapshot is desired for both research and policies. Whether or not an urban region is still the classical way to look at the urban structure remains the question. Their typology consists of the following types (Van Hecke et al.

2009:77-78):

- “The city centre. The city centre is the heart of the city. It is the decision and activities centre with the greatest concentration of region-related retail and services.

- Densely built-up urban neighbourhoods. The city core is embedded in a pattern of dense urban neighbourhoods, which in the Western European context usually correspond to the whole of the Old Town and the nineteenth-century extensions. It is a multifunctional area where mainly residential buildings, but also activities such as trade, crafts, schools, hospitals and industry are mixed.

- Core City. The core city consists of the city centre and the dense urban densely built-up urban neighbourhoods. The core city is characterized as the old close contiguous central part of the urban region.

- Central city. The central city is the total fusion municipality of which the city centre is part of.

- Outskirts. The core city is surrounded on all sides by the outskirts consisting mainly of less dense, but still contiguous twentieth-century buildings. The main function is living while still numerous green spaces are preserved. In the outskirts of the larger cities, secondary trading and service areas might occur. These are mostly old municipality cores which were integrated into the expansive city. Grouped into uniform zones, one finds industrial areas and traffic infrastructure here. In the outskirts the continuity of the buildings is not broken.

- Urban residential area (or morphological agglomeration). The urban residential area includes the core city and the outskirts. It is the scenery contiguous built with houses, public buildings, industrial and commercial buildings, including the intermediate roads, parks, sport terrains etc. The urban residential area is bordered by a zone consisting of agricultural land, forests, fallow and uncultivated land and scattered habitation.

- (Operationalized) Agglomeration. The agglomeration is obtained by adapting the urban residential area to the municipality border. For this one calculates the relative share of the inhabitants of a municipality who live in an urban residential area, compared to the total population of the municipality. The

municipality is included in the agglomeration if they share more than 50 per cent.

- Banlieue. The banlieue joins with the agglomeration. It is the outer zone of the city. The population growth is determined largely by suburbanization from the centre. Morphologically both the living and the companies and institutions in the banlieue are characterized by an extensive form of land use. Morphological the banlieue appears rural, functionally it is urban.

- Urban region. The urban region is the whole of the agglomeration and banlieue. It is the whole enlarged spatial structure, in which they 'set out' basic activities of the urban community, namely living, working, raising children, shopping, culture and entertainment are predominantly localized.

Amongst these activities are intense relationships exists, so that a functional unit is formed which remains largely oriented to the traditional core city.

- Residential Commuter zone. The residential commuter zone is a zone that joins the urban region as a result of the strong development of the autochthonous commuting. This area depends for a large part on the employment in the urban region.

- Urban living complex. The residential commuter zones together with the urban region form the urban living complex.”

In this typology there is no mention of a peri-urban territorial type, however in other parts of the monograph the term ‘périurbanisation’ is used. In the French version it occurs several times, which is much more compared to the Dutch version where the term occurs only once. As both documents have the same content, this means that in the Dutch version other terms should be used to describe the same process.

In the French version the term peri-urban is for example used as: “This contrast between the city centre and the banlieue is very much due to the dynamics of periurbanisation, which was very strong in Belgium, of the middle class” (Van Hecke et al. 2009:153). The Dutch version does in a sense refer to the same process by omitting the term periurbanisation: “This contrast between the city centre and the banlieue is very much due to the dynamics of urbanisation of the outskirts, which was very strong in Belgium, of the middle class” (Van Hecke et al. 2009:155). In both cases the urbanisation of the areas outside of the city centre is mentioned, just different terms are used. This is also the case in the typology, a different term is used for an area in the urban field that could be considered as the peri-urban territorial type.

This typology is used in research on the peri-urban areas in Belgium. In their research on the rurbanisation and periurbanisation in Wallonia, Eggerickx and Capron (2001) look into the rural and peri-urban areas and small villages around Namur and in Brabant Walloon. In order to look at the Belgian peri-urban area they consider first of all the territorial type ‘banlieue’ as peri-peri-urban.

Van Hecke et al. (2009) describe the banlieue as the spatial reflection of the suburbanisation process which is joined with population growth, an increase of the build-up area and an increase in prosperity (as suburbanisation is income selective). In order for a municipality to be considered as banlieue the following criteria were created (Van Hecke et al. 2009:94):

1. “The population growth between 1981 and 2003 (1/1/2003) (Growth index

= population 2003 / population 1981 x 100) is greater or equal to 115.

2. The median income of the municipality, in relation to the median income of the district in 2001, is greater than or equal to 100 (median income municipality / median income district x 100). The median income is the income associated with the declaration that is located in the middle of the series when the declarations are classified by income.

3. Migration from the agglomeration compared to the total immigration in the municipality between 1992 and 2001 is greater than or equal to 40 per cent. Or the emigration to the central city (or the entire Brussels-Capital Region) from the municipality between 1992 and 2001 is greater than or equal to 25 per cent.

4. The commuting to the agglomeration compared to the in the municipality living employed labour force in 2001 is greater than or equal to 25 per cent.

5. The commuting to the agglomeration compared to the commuters (in the municipality resident active working population who work outside their municipality of residence) in 2001 is greater than or equal to 50 per cent.

6. The commuting of the secondary school and college students to the agglomeration compared to the total school population in 2001 is greater than or equal to 35 per cent.

7. The proportion of the build-up area in the municipality in relation to the total area of the municipality in 2003 is greater or equal to 20 per cent. Or the evolution of the build-up area between 1991 and 2003 (build-up surface 2003 / build-up surface 1991 x 100) is greater or equal to 128 per cent for the Walloon municipalities and 130 per cent for the Flemish municipalities.

These percentages correspond to the regional developments.”

A municipality needs to answer at least at five criteria to be considered as a banlieue municipality. If a municipality was already considered banlieue in 1991 it only needs to answer to four criteria. The definition was sharpened as the urban region is very dynamic and depends also on developments in the society and hence the relation with banlieue regions changes over time. The slight adaption of the criteria compared to 1991 has caused some changes in the number of banlieue municipalities, however not drastically.

Eggerickx and Capron (2001:125) also mention that the urban centre and the surrounding municipalities in the agglomeration make up the urban agglomeration and that the banlieue municipalities and the residential commuter zones represent the peri-urban area. The residential commuter zones are, as in the previous sets of criteria for the delimitation of the urban living complex, determined by the following criterion (Van Hecke et al. 2009:96): “the proportion of commuters to the agglomeration compared to the in the municipality living employed labour force has to be at least 15 per cent in 2001.”

In some areas people commute to multiple surrounding cities and not just to one leading to an overlap of the residential commuter zones. When these are municipalities that are part of a central city or urban region, or are part of a banlieue of another urban region, then the status of agglomeration or banlieue has priority over the status of residential commuter zone to another urban zone.

For example, almost all municipalities around Leuven which are designated as banlieue, could also be considered residential commuter zones of Brussels.

Without applying the aforementioned rule the residential commuter zone around

Brussels would be much larger than to what is limited now (Van Hecke et al.

2009).

In order to examine the peri-urban area in Switzerland an operationalization is needed. This part has looked at the different ways in which academic research and administrations have operationalized this space. This area is often described as being located on the edges of the cities, yet how to define the urban areas? This already provides a large diversity when looking at multiple countries.

Conceptualising the peri-urban area consequently in a universal way has proven to be a challenge; this is largely due to the many different characteristics attributed to the space as well as to the many differences observed between countries. It is therefore important to keep in mind that every operationalization of the peri-urban area, in studies and policies, is case specific. All interpretations of the peri-urban area are subject to the local and national circumstances.

In order to objectivise the peri-urban area and thus to delimit the area of research, scientists have to use a set of criteria to include some parts of the territory, whereas others will be excluded. Examples are distance from the city, commuting distance, housing density, a combination of growth rates, distance to the city and population density or a combination of net migration and housing construction. This approach only delimits the peri-urban area.

The policy makers, on the other hand, are often concerned with the territory of the whole country and the multiple different spatial types that coexist in order to allocate specific policies to specific spatial types. This is also the reason why territorial typologies developed by policy makers are more specific and on a lower scale level.

The Swiss municipal typology identifies with around 20 different variables 22 different municipal types. Two of these types are peri-urban types, either metropolitan or non-metropolitan. The definition of these areas is conducted by deduction; when municipalities are not rich, employment or suburban they are peri-urban. Therefore there are no specific characteristic to identify the peri-urban are directly. In France this is different, there 5 territorial types are included. The peri-urban area is defined by the ’40 per cent’ criteria:

municipalities in which 40 per cent or more of active/working residents will work in the many urban areas without reaching this threshold with one of them". In Belgium eleven different spatial types are identified and the peri-urban area, defined as banlieu, needs to full-fill 5 of 7 criteria to be considered peri-urban.

The comparison of these three countries shows how different the peri-urban areas are defined due to different approaches, data and other country specific contexts. Indeed, defining what the peri-urban area is, is complex.

Part 4. Supply and demand: the relation between the