The preservation of productive activities in the Brussels Capital Region: The interplay between zoning and industrial gentrification

Urban activities such as housing, productive space, green space, offices, etc. compete for scarce urban land, especially in cities with a population growth, such as London and Brussels. Thereby, low-value uses such as production have a more vulnerable position in a private land market governed by real estate dynamics in comparison to high-value uses such as offices and housing. While local governments of post-industrial cities become more and more susceptible to revive their relationship with productive activities, they risk losing their productive space due to industrial gentrification. Based on the disappearance of production space in the case of the Brussels Capital Region (BCR), this paper aims at evaluating how the BCR supports urban production with a clear focus on zoning and the provision of production space. Although, the BCR is a post-industrial city, it continuous to lose production space at a rapid pace. With the use of an analytical framework of urban settlement patterns of production, the production-related zoning typologies are analyzed in mixed inner-city areas as well as in more peripheral mono- and mixed areas of the BCR. Our analysis of all production-related zoning typologies of the BCR land use plan demonstrates that industrial gentrification is an important driver for a continuous deindustrialization. This paper presents zoning strategies to regulate the private land market as well as public land strategies to preserve urban production space.