The “stop beton” (stop-concrete) strategy: a last hope for urban containment in Wallonia?

Our presentation will be structured in three parts. In the first part, we will comment the path-dependency mechanisms that explain the tradition of urban sprawl that affects Belgium in general and Wallonia in particular. It will be developed that this path-dependency is intrinsically linked to both, the great respect for individual property rights and the power relations between urban and nonurban interests. The consequence of this tradition is the important size of the artificial surfaces compared to population numbers.

The second part of the presentation will analyse the hypothesis that Wallonia is experiencing a period of transition in spatial planning and land policy. Cities are now understood to be the driving force in economic growth and, in parallel, land thrift has been recognized increasingly as an important element in building sustainability. The match between those two trends explains the current “stop beton” (stop-concrete) strategy of the Walloon regional government. This strategy has been announced in the 2019 Regional Master Plan, on the basis of quantitative guidelines: to reduce land artificialization to 6 km2/year by 2030 – i.e. half of the current consumption – and to move towards (tendre vers) 0 km2/year by 2050.

In the third and last part of the presentation, we will describe the current work of the regional government for giving concrete form to these guidelines. This work is based on the development of an active land policy which represents a critical juncture in comparison to past practices. This active land policy will require the use of devices such as transfer of development rights or land readjustment. In terms of feasibility, this notably raises the question of the technical expertise that will be required for the appropriate use of those land policy devices.