Investigating the outer zone - spatial practices and values in the abandoned territories of the industrial city

Charleroi is an industrial city from which industry has withdrawn, leaving behind unemployment and decay of the urban fabric, as well as numerous industrial wastelands in the direct vicinity of the urban centre. Left abandoned since the 1970s, most of these lands are owned by real estate companies, which are waiting for the opportunity to obtain a profit from it by developing urbanisation projects.
Meanwhile, nature and certain social practices, whether associative or marginal, are gradually taking possession of these spaces. The partial recognition of these human and non-human activities by the authorities, through various political processes, has already succeeded in reclaiming part of these places for the benefit of the community. But these achievements are limited, and some of them remain temporary. The new spatial values that have been generated in these places are already being coveted by developers.
The current ecological and political situation invites us to think about the urban value of these places which have regained a part of wildness. The work that we propose to present is the second stage of a field survey intended to document practices, actors, stories and traces that are inscribed in these sites, legally or illegally, in order to map this informal city and to value what it produces. Through this survey, we seek to detect the spatial practices that should or could be supported, protected or cared for in these territories, and to translate their value through narratives, and also graphic and cartographic representations.