SWITCH OF SCOPE ON SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT
PERSPECTIVES FOR AGRICULTURE IN URBANISED
AND URBANISING REGIONS
Hans LEINFELDER
Assistant
Ghent University, Centre for Mobility and Physical Planning
Krijgslaan 281 S8A3
B-9000 Gent
Belgium
Tel : +32 (0)9 2648574 Fax : +32 (0)9 2644986
e-mail : hans.leinfelder@ugent.be
Abstract
Flanders is very densely populated. This has resulted in an outspread settlement
structure, characterised by an enormous amount of residential dwellings, commercial
and economic activities all over the countryside. Major parts of Flanders are
urbanised and/or still urbanising. Former vast agricultural areas, even those that were
suitable for agriculture, have been fragmented by the settlement of urban functions
and activities. Spatially, it seems as if the agricultural enclaves have become the
backyards of houses of those who have moved from city to countryside.
Nevertheless, policy and research stick to the traditional approach of agriculture as a
purely economic activity. The area demand of agriculture is determined by economic
prognoses. Even the recent tendency to promote and analyse multifunctional
agriculture still starts from the premise that the main function of agriculture in society
is the economic activity of food production. Non-commodity outputs are considered
as residual products that should be remunerated to increase the farmers’ income.
The article wants to switch scope. It summarises the intention of a research project
that has started in March 2004. The project wants to define development perspectives
for agriculture in urbanised and urbanising regions starting off from the hypothesis
that the whole set of quality demands of society for a specific region should direct this
development, rather than merely the economic demands. Because of the expertise
within the research network the focus of the research is on the impact of spatial
quality demands on development perspectives for agriculture.
1. Introduction to sprawl in Flanders
Flanders, the Dutch speaking and northern part of federal Belgium has a population
density of 443 inhabitants per square kilometre. Especially the central part of
Flanders, between the major cities Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent, is characterised by a
high concentration of people and economic activities. In (spatial) policy documents
this central region is called the Flemish Diamond. The concentration of activities
expresses itself spatially in a very dense infrastructural network and an omnipresent
sprawl. But also the regions bordering to the Flemish Diamond and more remote areas
around one or more smaller cities, are often urbanised or still urbanising. Kesteloot
(2003:15) calls Flanders one urban network, albeit an urban network made up of small
cities. It is one big city in the form of a network of many, relatively small urban
centres instead of one global city. Almost 70 % of the Flemish population lives in an
urban complex, this is a region that is dominantly structured by suburbanisation from
and commuting to and from one of the nine Flemish urban agglomerations or
Brussels.
Remarkably, only 10 to 12 % of the population lives in urban centres; the majority
lives in a suburban environment. Even more relevant is the ratio between the total
surface of the urban complex and the population of the urban agglomeration. For
Brussels this ratio is 0,53 ha per inhabitant, compared to 0,33 for Frankfurt, 0,22 for
Paris, less than 0,2 for Lille, London and the Ruhr area, 0,11 for the Randstad
Holland. Within Flanders the ratio varies between 0,3 and 1,27 what indicates the
unobstructed extension of the suburbanisation. Also Bruges, Ghent and Leuven have
relatively high ratios (Kesteloot, 2003:18-19). Along with the residential
suburbanisation, economic and commercial activities and services sprawl.
According to Van den Broeck (2001:1), the main factors to explain this urban sprawl
are the following.
 The prosperous economic position in the delta of the Scheldt river and
generally in Europe
 The dense network of (medieval) cities (at marching distances of 25 km) and
villages
 The physical character of the land what makes it easy and cheap to develop
 The individual mentality of the population with the single family house and
garden as the Flemish dream
 The easy accessability of the rural area by the dense road and railway network
 The promotion of private ownership by the government during two centuries
and the influence of the church promoting living in smaller cities and villages
far away from the ‘pernicious’ influences of the big city.
Qualitatively, a rural continuum survives under and through this urban continuum.
Both layers are present in pure forms – the historical town centre and the real
countryside – but in most cases they exist in overflow as simultaneous projections of
two images (Loeckx and De Meulder, 2003:273). According to De Boeck (2002:162)
the most densely urbanised regions in the Flemish Diamond still contain 60 % unbuilt
area. He states that the Flemish Diamond is a patchwork of urban and landscape
relicts, a juxtaposition of the artificial and the apparently natural. Moreover, the
totality of the Flemish Diamond idyllically still refers to nature, a perception that
attracts most inhabitants to this surrogate for living in the countryside. Dehaene
(2003:18-19) summarises this qualitative description saying that (Belgium) Flanders
can be read as a generalisation of a kind of low dynamic development, open and
flexible, without overheating.
2. Introduction to agriculture in a sprawl context
It is in this overflow of the rural and the urban continuum that agriculture has to be
situated in a major part of Flanders. Contrary to the situation in the Netherlands, and
specifically the Randstad, where this overflow is mainly concentrated in the fringe of
or in between the major cities around the Green Heart, the Flemish countryside is
characterised by a sort of general state of urbanisation or sprawl.
Historically, in big parts of the Flemish countryside, agriculture, residential
development, artisanal manufacturing, … have always coexisted in a pattern of small
scale spatial interweaving. This coexistence once used to be an international
economic strength of the Flemish agriculture, because of the direct functional
relationship between the immense amount of flax producing farms, the processing of
the flax into sheeting in small farm and (non-farm but) home bound enterprises in the
countryside and finally the (international) commercialisation of the sheeting in rich
medieval cities such as Ghent.
Nowadays, because of modernisation and scale enlargement in agriculture and
because of the shift of the processing of agricultural products to industrial factories,
this functional pattern of coexistence has grown poorer and seems to have become a
weakness instead of a strength for the spatial coexistence of activities in the
countryside. No longer, there is a direct functional or economical relation between the
inhabitants of rural dwellings and the surrounding agricultural activity. Moreover,
those inhabitants even seem to become fed up with many of the characteristics of
farming, such as working activity early in the morning or on Sundays, manure and
fodder smell, muddy roads, … Also processing industries are no longer dependent of
the agricultural activity in the region for input material. If it is more profitable to
import qualitative products from another region or from abroad, these industries won’t
hesitate to do so. To conclude, the functional coexistence of agriculture and other
activities in the region has disappeared but the spatial result of the former coexistence,
the spatial mix of agriculture and other activities, is still there.
One of the big challenges in Flemish spatial planning policy for the countryside will
be to address this switch in coexistence of activities, and more specifically the change
in the relation between agriculture and other activities. This switch in scope will
certainly have implications for the spatial development perspectives of agriculture.
That is what the rest of the paper is about.
First, the actual Flemish spatial planning policy towards agriculture will be analysed
as being dominated by an economic logic, based on the functional relationship
between agriculture, processing and commercialisation. This approach of agriculture
is not an isolated phenomenon but is embedded in a planning discourse of city and
countryside as antipoles that has dominated the planning profession for decades and
still does.
Secondly, a first attempt will be made to try and formulate a framework in which new
spatial development perspectives for agriculture can be sought. In a first step, it is
necessary to define alternative discourses for the relationship between city and
countryside. It is impossible to discuss new spatial development perspectives for
agriculture within the existing planning discourse about city and countryside because
this would result in the same approach. In a second step, it will be made clear that a
more qualitative approach will be necessary and that this qualitative approach will
have to be based on more than the abstract notion of “spatial quality” that is nowadays
becoming more and more popular in planning profession. A more qualitative
approach of the countryside and of agriculture in specific will make it necessary to
define cultural and social expectations of society about the countryside and
agriculture instead of using vague notions such as future value, use value and
perceptional value. In the third step, one of these cultural and social expectations – the
conception of open areas in an urbanised environment as an alternative for public
places in the cities – will be elaborated in some more detail.
Finally, the intentions of a recently started research project from the universities of
Ghent and Louvain concerning these topics will be discussed.
3. The actual Flemish planning policy towards agriculture
The actual framework for the Flemish planning policy dates from 1997. It is the
Spatial Structure Plan for Flanders (Ministerie, 1997). The spatial structure plan starts
from the existing spatial structure and formulates a desired (future) spatial structure in
2007, based on an analysis of trends and prognoses.
3.1.The actual vision on the spatial development of agriculture …
The future spatial structure also contains a vision on the future development of
agriculture in Flanders. The plan states very formally : “Based on the area that is
nowadays really in agricultural use and starting from the existing agricultural zones in
the zoning plans, the area with agricultural destination will be 750.000 ha (Ministerie,
1997:393) (approximately 60 % of the total surface of Flanders). Scientifically, this
quantitative ambition is based merely on prognoses about the future economic
development of agriculture in Flanders which was nothing more than a very basic
overview of the economic evolutions – in terms of percentage – in 13 relevant agrobusiness complexes (Viaene et al., 1996:379). The prognoses were based on the
economic and social structure of the enterprises, the possible changes in world trade
policy and European Common Agricultural Policy and the demand ratios in European
perspective. Except the social structure of the enterprises, the only non-economic
parameter in the prognoses was the possible evolution of the environmental (manure)
policy. In the political decision making process of the Spatial Structure Plan for
Flanders, the scientific result of the prognosis – an area in agricultural use in 2007 of
585.000 ha (Ministerie, 1997:288-289) – was completely ignored and the quantitative
goal was defined as 750.000 ha, as mentioned above. This was mainly the result of the
political lobbying of agricultural professional interest groups : they suggested to keep
the area, in agricultural use in 1992, unchanged till 2007 because of all the
uncertainties on the European and international level. Instead of being dictated by the
need for a sufficient self-supporting food supply, the demand to extend agricultural
enterprising out of environmental (manure) purposes and the social-economical aim to
ensure a reasonable farm income and employment seem to have become the
determining factors for the spatial demands of agriculture.
But not only the quantitative options in the Spatial Structure Plan for Flanders
indicate an economic bias. Also the elaboration of the following qualitative
development perspectives suggests a focus on merely the economic aspect of
agriculture : the definition of agricultural areas to guarantee the development
possibilities for agriculture, the differentiation in possibilities to build agricultural
buildings, the expansion of existing and the location of new agricultural and
processing firms, the recognition and support of the agriculture macrostructure (areas
of regional specialisation in agriculture) and the definition of areas for industrial
agriculture (Ministerie, 1997:391-399). To conclude, the area demand of agriculture is
defined strictly from an economic point of view, conserving an area as large as
possible for professional agriculture through definition and eventually through limited
differentiation in plans. In reality this approach results in the loss of valuable
agricultural land for industry or for compensations of the loss of nature elsewhere
because a differentiation between valuable and less valuable agricultural land is
missing. The defensive and conservationist strategy of the agricultural professional
interest groups can be negative in its consequences.
3.2.… embedded in a dominant planning discourse of city and countryside as
antipoles
This spatial planning policy approach of agriculture in Flanders is not a solitary
phenomenon. The area demand of nature is analogously defined from an exclusively
ecological point of view : what currently has an ecological value has to be kept, what
has potential ecological value has to be strengthened (see Leinfelder, 2003; Custers et
al., 2003).
In short, in Flemish planning policy agriculture and nature are considered to be weak,
low dynamic functions and activities for which area has to be guaranteed in an early
planning stage, motivated by conservationist economical and ecological arguments.
Moreover, at the same time planners are convinced that agriculture and nature only
can survive if they are embedded in large and vast units.
But who or what is this strong, high dynamic (common) enemy of agriculture and
nature ? To answer this question it is necessary to zoom out and to characterise the
planning discourse in which the described spatial planning policy for agriculture and
nature has been developed. Based on the observation of Hidding et al. (1998) and
Hidding and Wisserhof (1999) of the dominance of the planning discourse of city and
countryside as antipoles during the last decades, the overwhelming urbanisation of the
countryside or expansion of urban functions all over the countryside should be
considered as the common enemy of agriculture and nature.
This dominant planning discourse considers city and countryside as separate entities.
The difference between city and countryside is multidimensional : functional, cultural,
morphological, ecological, … (Hidding et al., 1998:vii). City and countryside should
be planned separately within an overall vision of strengthening the compact cities and
restricting new developments in the countryside. Van Blerck and Evers (1999:8)
subtly state that new concepts which counter the antipole position and mix city and
countryside, such as parkcity, urban landscape, green metropolis, new estates in the
countryside and wild crafting, are still a bridge too far for many people. Less subtly,
the Flemish master builder Bob Van Reeth stated that the countryside is for the cows
and the birds and that planners should stay very far away from the countryside; by
concentrating new developments in cities and villages, planners build on existing
infrastructure and on urban life that is much more interesting than the countryside
(Brouns, 2003:24). Also the vision of the Spatial Structure Plan for Flanders –
“Flanders, open and urban” (Ministerie, 1997:317) – embodies the rule of the antipole
discourse and has had clear effects on provincial and local planning initiatives that
have uncritically copied the discourse.
By perceiving city and countryside as separate entities, the planning policy that is
associated with this planning discourse is convinced that agriculture and nature can
take a stand against urban development. If the spatial development perspectives in the
plan guarantee an economic development of agriculture and an ecologically sound
development of nature in vast areas, these two activities should be able to withstand
urbanisation.
This belief makes abstraction of the numerous gradients between city and countryside,
all over and especially in the centre of Flanders. Besides the name they got in the
Spatial Structure Plan for Flanders – urban networks such as the Flemish Diamond
and the built peripheral areas around bigger cities like Antwerp and Brussels, …- little
planning policy has been formulated. Planning initiatives on the three planning levels
(Flanders, province and community) that try to implement these gradients in plans and
planning regulations seem to be continuously postponed or make abstraction of the
dense spatial mix of urban and rural activities.
Reality is however harsh. Despite this belief in planning, the autonomous
transformation of agricultural housing in residential housing, children’s farms, riding
schools, small enterprises, garden shops, restaurants, software offices, … results in a
stealing invasion of urban activities in the rural countryside. This silent take-over is
still continuing and moreover seems to be socially accepted. Policy also seems to
adjust quite easily to this current evolution taking generic policy measures for altering
houses, industrial buildings and pony, sheep and horse shelters in the countryside and
more specifically in the agricultural areas in the zoning plans. The spatially dominant
form of agricultural enterprising in Flanders – farms with a mix of cattle, meadow and
arable land – doesn’t really seem to be performing well enough to keep the urban
activities away from the countryside.
4. In search of a new framework for the spatial development of
agriculture in urbanising and urbanised regions
Searching for a new framework for the spatial development of agriculture, the
analysis by Van der Ploeg (2001:9-11) of the corresponding dangers in the current
postmodern societal constellation should be kept in mind : the definition and
elaboration of a certain image of the future (i.e. framework) – not yet existing, but to
be developed from now on -, and the design and implementation of measures and
rules to realise this image by simultaneous coordination of several divergent and
apparently independent practices lead to a uniformisation. In a postmodern
constellation the system of involved experts creates a new and exclusive domain of
the undisputable in which only those actions that correspond with the image of the
future will be considered as valid. Everything else is delegitimised in advance.
This explains why, in a first paragraph of this chapter, it is necessary to define
alternative discourses for the relationship between city and countryside. It is not only
impossible to discuss new spatial development perspectives for agriculture within the
existing planning discourse about city and countryside because this would result in the
same approach. It is also impossible in our complex network society (see among
others Castells, 1996) to put one planning discourse forward as the answer to the
changing relationship between city and countryside.
Each of these alternative discourses will have to be conceptualised. The character of
the discourses will make a more qualitative approach necessary. The second
paragraph emphasises that efficient and socially accepted spatial planning needs an
alternative for the abstract notion of “spatial quality”. It is time to construct a new
planning language for the countryside which is able to translate the cultural and social
expectations of network society for the countryside.
In the last paragraph, as an example and in short, some embryonic philosophical
considerations will be made on one of these cultural and social expectations of
network society for the countryside – the conception of accessible open areas in an
urbanised environment as an alternative for public spaces in the cities.
4.1. Alternative discourses for relationship between city and countryside
Hidding et al. (1998) define three relevant discourses as alternatives for the dominant
discourse of city and countryside as antipoles : city and countryside as networks of
activities, city and countryside as ecosystems and city and countryside as systems of
places1. These discourses don’t seem to be mature enough yet to rule as main
planning discourses. At this moment they are only subdiscourses that can eventually
develop to main discourses.
 The discourse of city and countryside as networks of activities emphasises the
interaction between actors, is by consequence in its analytical approach actororiented and tries to implement spatial concepts such as corridors and an
ecological main structure through managing the network of actors. Also in
Flanders the network discourse is growing in importance through discussions on
networking and on economical, urban and ecological networks. Until now most
attempts to implement the network idea in actual planning processes have failed.
 The discourse of city and countryside as ecosystems focuses on the natural
substrate and on the relation between this substrate and the social use of it. The
analytical approach emphasises as well on actors as on structural aspects and tries
to implement spatial concepts such as water system and ecopolis through
autonomous actions, albeit with a direction on a meta-level towards sustainable
development2. Although the structuring power of the natural substrate and the
network of river valleys are main principles of the Spatial Structure Plan for
Flanders, this discourse is primarily used in nature policy and in particular in
water policy with integrated policy plans for each basin.
 The discourse of city and countryside as systems of places focuses on the genius
loci : the identity, the atmosphere and the characteristics of a place. This discourse
is anchored in our post-modern society as a reaction on trends of uniformisation
and acceleration. Planning is meant to create places with varied characteristics and
identities. Analytically this discourse pays attention to spatial as well as social
structures and tries to implement concepts such as green metropolis or urban
landscape through managing the network of actors. Although it has not yet been
tested, this discourse seems to be applicable in the built peripheral areas around
bigger cities (Van den Broeck, 1999 and Van der Sluys and Wijermans, 2001).
These discourses don’t need to be excluding one another. The intense mix of
networks and the historically grown mosaic of places in urban networks suggests for
example a combination of the network and the system of places discourses. As in
many cases, finally the best discourse will be a combination of elements from several
discourses.
The relevance of the three discourses is that they can be tested in their consequences
for the land use of a certain function, for example agriculture, and that these
consequences can be compared to the consequences of the dominant, existing
planning discourse of city and countryside as antipoles. To be very clear, by starting
off from planning discourses, it is the ensemble of ideas about the spatial development
of a region (urbanisation versus open areas, networks, physical structure and identity)
that will be determining the spatial development perspectives for agriculture and not
vice versa. In this way alternative images of the future role of agriculture in the
countryside that are perhaps closer to reality than the images of agriculture within the
dominant discourse will be set clear. Undoubtedly the testing of the three discourses
will ask for assumptions about the desired spatial arrangement of functions and
activities and, consequently, be vulnerable or susceptible to criticism. The big
advantage of these discourses is however that they create the possibility to get out of
the fossilising dominant discourse and perhaps put things in another perspective.
4.2.Need for a conceptualisation of discourses that addresses cultural and social
expectations
The character of the discourses will make a more qualitative approach necessary. Key
words such as identity and ecosystem can hardly be translated into quantitative goals.
Consequently, the discussion about land use by agriculture will shift from a
discussion about area demand towards spatial qualitative constraints within which
agriculture will have to function. However, in this switch in scope from quantity
towards quality is hiding a new snake in the grass : the possible and increasing abuse
of the abstract notion of “spatial quality”.
Van Assche and Jacobs (2003:254) are amazed about the popularity of the notion
“quality” in discussions and policy documents. Spatial quality always seems to have a
positive meaning although it is a complete abstract and vague term that never
corresponds to concrete phenomena. They are even more critical when they suggest
that governments that state to aim for spatial quality, implicitly admit not to know
how to deal with the spatial arrangement of functions and activities : when a term
without meaning is number one in the charts of spatial planning, it alludes to a crisis
(Van Assche and Jacobs, 2003:255).
The efforts of planners in texts, in presentations for politicians and during
informational public meetings trying to convince the reader or the listener that what is
being presented contributes to spatial quality, seem to confirm this perception of
spatial quality. Planners seem to be convinced that they get their hands completely
free (the power, the monopoly) to start initiatives, once the public has recognised
and/or acknowledged that a plan bears the foundations for spatial quality. This
perception however doesn’t seem to be corresponding to reality. Because of the
multiple interpretation of the notion spatial quality each person in the public will have
recognised and/or acknowledged another kind of spatial quality and will feel ignored
at the moment of realisation and several of them will even take juridical steps to fight
the project or initiative. The power gained by using the notion spatial quality, is in
other words very relative.
According to Van Assche and Jacobs (2003:256), the reason for the increase in the
use of the notion of spatial quality by planners has to be sought at the level of
discourses ! The absence of the notion in discussion and policy documents alludes to a
consensus about the quality notions of a discourse. When those common assumptions
start to stagger, the quality notion is put forward. A belief in the simplicity,
invariability and eternity of quality and of quality notions of a discourse,
automatically results in a search for invariable quality criteria and an endless
confusion of tongues. This statement is another argument to conceptualise the
alternative discourses for the relationship between city and countryside as a way out
of the well known story.
Simultaneously, it seems essential to relate the notion of “spatial quality” in planning
and implementation to cultural and social expectations within society. This will
increase the recognition and acknowledgement. The actual spatial planning practice
shows too often a belief that planners know what the cultural and social expectations
are. “The hubris of the city-building professions was (is) their faith in the liberating
potential of their technical knowledge and their corresponding belief in their ability to
transcend the interests of capital, labour and the state, and to arrive at an objective
assessment of the ‘public interest’” (Sandercock, 1998:4). No wonder that
undoubtedly well meant spatial planning initiatives strand after the planning phase
and are never implemented … because those who is planned for don’t think that their
cultural and social expectations are taken into account.
Anticipating to cultural and social expectations needs more than the expertise to
detect spatial structures in a region, the capacity to formulate a vision on a
“qualitative” future spatial development and finally the know how to sell it to the
public. If a plan has to be accepted and carried by the future users of the region – and
not only the interest groups that “represent” them – there is need for a more
professional assistance of these potential users in formulating themselves (their own
and more general) relevant problems, suggesting themselves possible solutions which
can be elaborated by planners and finally choosing themselves between plan
alternatives by comparing pros and cons. The position of the planner is “to teach
people to fish” (Sandercock, 1998:7) instead of fishing for them. Undoubtedly, the
newborn fishermen’s language will be totally different from the planner’s language
with notions such as “spatial quality”.
4.3.Some embryonic philosophical considerations on the conception of accessible
open areas as an alternative for public spaces in cities
In his article about public spaces in an urban environment Van der Wouden (2002)
defines planning as a cultural mission. Because of the loss of cultural meeting places
in historical city centres to the monopoly of entertainment, there is a need to create
new meeting places where groups can meet, learn from each other and consequently
use this knowledge to be innovative. In other words, the Greek agora and the Roman
fora need a contemporary substitute, albeit not so much through a nostalgic
renovation of the big public spaces in the city centres but through the creation of new
places that fit closer to the needs of contemporary society. In his article Van der
Wouden elaborates this concept in the urban fringe where shopping malls and football
stadiums have the potential to become the new agora.
Taking into account the increased and still increasing individual mobility, this concept
could also be implemented to open areas in an urbanised and urbanising environment.
Already now these open areas function as a passage from one place of activities to
another or as places where several groups meet : farmers, residents, “software
farmers”, vacationers, … However, the spatial arrangement of all these activities is
not at all conceptualised as a public space where these functions and activities can
interrelate in a sort of symbiosis. Instead of the current planning practice of putting
“spatial quality” into operation by providing enough agricultural land from an
economical point of view and preserving the natural areas from an ecological point of
view, an alternative could be to conceive the spatial development of the open areas
and of agriculture in these open areas by clear, tangible notions that are nowadays
used in the design of public spaces in an urban environment : optimising of the
accessibility, stimulating mixed uses, mediating in confrontations, valorising the
existing context, creating a new context, using a typology, guaranteeing flexibility and
adaptability, … (Technum, 2001).
The design and planning of open spaces starting from these more concrete notions
seems to result for many actors in a more intensive and greater appreciation of spatial
quality than the current approach of defining vast areas of nature and agriculture. At
the same time, this approach confirms the statement that spatial planning is more than
the zoning of areas. Aspects such as the development and the management are as
essential to planning as zoning.
5. To conclude : intentions of a recently started research project
The first of March 2004 research groups of the Ghent University and the Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven started a research project, titled “Preconditions for a sustainable
land use by agriculture in urbanised and urbanising network society”3. The research
network is consciously composed of several disciplines to avoid a bias towards a pure
agro-economic or agro-social approach. Vice versa, the involvement of agricultural
economists and sociologists has to prevent the planners in the network to design
unrealistic future images in which any form of sustainable agriculture is impossible.
The first step of the research project intends to translate the four planning discourses
about the relationship between city and countryside into starting points for spatial
development. These starting points are assumptions about and interpretations of the
planning discourse and always susceptible to discussion : some will consider these
starting points as constrictions of the discourse, others won’t recognise the starting
points as a correct translation of the discourse. Main intention of this translation is to
come to a spectrum of possible visions on the spatial development within network
society. The discourse of city and countryside as antipoles can be considered as a sort
of autonomous scenario that occurs if the existing planning discourse is continued
without any changes. The three other discourses at their turn try to fill in different
aspects of network society: flows in networks, the physical system as structuring
layer, the need for places with identity (glocality).
A further theoretical elaboration of the planning discourses and starting points seems
useless. The elaboration would remain too abstract. Therefore, in the second step of
the research, two case studies will be examined : the region between Kortrijk and
Roeselare and another yet to define area. First, in these two case studies the discourses
and starting points will be translated in spatial concepts and in spatial development
perspectives for agriculture. Secondly, the spatial concepts and spatial development
perspectives for agriculture will be implemented on a multiple analysed cut through
the study areas.
The spatial concepts, that address more than only agriculture, will form the base for
the definition of development perspectives for agriculture. The spatial concept about
the spatial pattern of several functions and activities will determine the spatial
development possibilities of agriculture. For example, if a spatial concept suggests
that area X in the fringe of the urban region should have recreational value for the
citizens, this will have consequences for the future agricultural activity.
By confronting these spatial development perspectives with an economical and social
analysis of the existing agriculture in the area, it will become clear if and to what
extent the current agriculture can meet the spatial preconditions. In a positive scenario
the agricultural activity can be considered as a sustainable land user … a negative
scenario will have policy implications. One implication could be to estimate the
(social and economical) efforts the farmer will have to make to meet the preconditions
and to look for policy measures that compensate the loss of income or employment by
a remuneration of the efforts of the farmer or by tapping new income sources.
The research project will end in February 2006.
1
2
3
Hidding et al. (1998) consider city and countryside as real estate as a fourth discourse. To me, their
elaboration of this discourse suggests that this discourse is more a set of means and instruments than
a real discourse. Therefore, I shall not discuss this discourse in this paragraph.
It can be questioned whether this discourse is a separate discourse or if it should be considered as a
general ecological quality aspect and thus a fundamental principle for each of the other planning
discourses, including the dominant antipole discourse. The implicit stress by Hidding et al. (1998) on
the relationship with the notion of sustainable development can be seen as an affirmation of this
argument.
The research project is financed by the Belgian Federal Public Planning Service-Science Policy
within the framework of the Scientific Support Plan for a Sustainable Development Policy II, part ISustainable production and consumption patterns. The coordinator of the research project is the
Centre for Mobility and Physical Planning of the Ghent University (G. Allaert, H. Leinfelder, D.
Verhoestraete and P. Vandenabeele). The other partners of the project are the Research Group
Urbanism and Planning (OSA) of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (B. De Meulder, L.
Vanautgaerden), the Department of Agricultural Economics of the Ghent University (G. Van
Huylenbroeck) and the Institute for Social and Economic Geography of the Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven (H. Meert).
Literature
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