Welfare Community Mixed Infrastructures: Reclaiming vacancy, federating capacities and empowering communities towards an ecological welfare

In a vicious circle, vacancy and degradation of built environment, speculation and expulsions or exclusion and
segregation are interconnected phenomena. In Brussels, these expulsion processes are further accentuated by
the scarce availability of land and speculative projects and processes that benefit external investors while
dispossessing the local communities. Across history, society has always relied on infrastructures of welfare and
solidarity to support the fragile and the newcomers, compensating for injustice and the misalignment of wealth
production and wealth redistribution. After the evolutions of the past 50 years at least, what remains of the
welfare state and of that culture of solidarity needs to be reshaped and updated vis-à-vis societal challenges
such as climate change, growing precariousness and forms of socio-spatial injustice, and transnational of
dispossession of resources led by the power of global corporations. And anytime the structures of solidarity or
welfare change, the structure of the city changes. A new concept of welfare and a new urban project are needed:
this is the only chance we have to allow forthcoming generations to find progressive solutios in dealing with our
accumulated debt.