Cross provincial comparison of drivers impacting urban densification: A case study of Brussels capital region, Flemish and Walloon Brabant

A vivid understanding of different drivers impacting the complex urban system is crucial in order to design a smart and sustainable spatial planning policy. Urban densification policies forms a imperative pathway in limiting urban sprawl especially in low density urban areas. Belgium has a typical decentralized spatial planning for three different regions of Wallonia, Flanders, and Brussels Capital Region since 1984 with their respective characteristics. Our paper focuses on analyzing a multi-level built up densities ranging from low to high built-up density. Our study area encompasses Brussels Capital region, Brabant of Flanders and Brabant of Wallonia. Vector based cadastral data from Belgian land registry is used to create built-up density maps for the year 2000, 2010 and 2020. A number of the impact of different socio-economic, political, geographic and accessibility factors(independent variable) has been considered following different literatures to evaluate the impact of urban densification where on multi-density built-up i.e.(dependent variable) using multinomial logistic regression model. Our result exhibits that all the variables diversify in a different way across all density classes for the three regions . This might be attributable to socioeconomic, geographical, and regulatory inequalities. While Flanders and Brussels capital Region are significantly impacted by slope and distance to roadways, densification Wallonia is driven by its land use policies especially zoning regulation. These findings underscore the need of addressing cross-regional divergences in the implementation of metropolitan planning policies, particularly in metropolitan areas that are holds a history of expanding into multiple regions and have dynamic spatial planning policies.