Urban vacancy: mapping the European research landscape
by Bas van Heur Abstract Although still a niche within established disciplines, research on urban vacancy has boomed in recent decades, with different research communities investigating different dimensions of vacancy. However, these communities rarely communicate with each other, leading to parallel debates, different conceptual vocabularies and diverging empirical foci. This becomes particularly problematic in the […]
Policy Lab 2025: The Cooperative City
On February 5th 2025, we hosted our second Policy Lab around The Cooperative City, a key moment within the WELCOMIN research project where we collaborate with various actors of the urban field to build our research. We were hosted by Bruxelles Environnement, and we brought together various participants to explore innovative approaches to cooperative models. The […]
Brussels 2044, The Fluid City: Design Studio Jury
This June, we wrap up our year-long design studio journey with 13 students, who worked on our second scenario, “The Fluid City”. Focused on the Brussels Capital Region, the studio explored how community welfare infrastructures can address vacancy and promote ecological welfare amid the city’s demographic growth. It emphasizes the necessity of flexibility, adaptability and […]
Raquel Rolnik as guest contributor to Design Studio
On the week of the 18th of March, the chair of Brussels Studies Institute took place. In that context, we were happy to welcome Raquel Rolnik, a professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at University of São Paulo. During a week, Raquel Rolnik shared her insights from over 45 years of critical scholarship, activism […]
Berlin: a fieldwork on the Fluid City
In the first week of March, the WELCOMIN team was in Berlin to carry out fieldwork concerning the second scenario of the research. Named the Fluid City, this scenario works from a perspective of 20 years from now. In this scenario, we account that the population of Brussels would have risen, and that vacancy has […]