Urban planning 2022-2023
Les 1 introductie
The six conditions of industrialization and the four issues characterizing the housing question in the
19th century.
1. Conditions for Industrialization in Europe: Slave Labour Plantation, Legitimation of Interest
and Technical Innovation, Natural Ressources, Global Trade, New Construction Materials and
Methods, Concentration of Workers and Factories
2. The Case of Ghent and Brussels
3. Two Problems and a Task: Health, Discipline, The Non-Waged Housewife
Industrialization in Europe
Forerunners were GB, Belgium, France and Switzerland
The conditions:
1) Plantation based on slave labour, agriculture for Export.
Examples in the ppt around 1760
1. Europeans have been doing this in the new world since 1600.
2. Plantation created a rift in local society because it brought a new factory.
3. Workers from far away with violent means
4. Plantation economy is global.
Examples of slave rebellions were eventually slaves fought back against the oppressors.
1789 St. Domingo was a very large colony in the Caribbean, on of the few successful rebellions
Claimed half a million lives -> country had to pay high compensation to France, impaired the
economic development.
2) The Legitimation of Interest and Technical Innovation
Book: Albert Otto Hirschman. The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for
Capitalism before Its Triumph, 1977
Important figures: Baron de Montesquieu, Sir James Steuart Denham, Adam Smith
, 1. “Interests” start to be considered as passion in the form of reason.
2. Mercantile state theory and classic economic thinking will advise their governors to
stimulate that interest among their governed subjects.
The legitimation of interest leads to an increasing differentiation of gender attribution or constructs:
1. the male (public) sphere where men compete in the pursuit of their individual (economic)
interest – an interest dedicated to economic and social investment in the (private) household.
2. the female private and domestic sphere of motherly love, care and beauty.
This separation is rather an ideology than an historical fact. However, as an ideology, it informs
historical accounts as well as urban and architectural design doctrines.
Machines for Cotton manufacture: Spinning Jenny, Water frame, Spinning Mule, Mechanical cotton G-
in (from 1760 till 1795)
Between 1795 and 1825 productivity in cotton production increased by the factor 370
Pictures of spinning machines
3) Condition 3: Natural Resources and New Organisation of Labor
Better organized building, better use closer and faster transport of natural resources
4) Condition 4: Global Trade
Great Britain: Maritime navigation, pre-existing global trade network, size and integration of
British markets, protected trade routes for example against France, political economy
supporting self interest and intellectual freedom.
Maps of trade routes, Docks, ports
,5) Condition 5: Technical Innovation. New Construction Materials and Methods, Building of
Unprecedented Size
Big factories being build around early 19th century
Picture of crystal palace with the world fair
6) Condition 6: Concentrate Factories next to Transport Hubs, and Workers near Factories
Development of steam engine around 1760s
Urban development for workers around factories
Schinkel talking about how English town are depressing, cheerless, with much poverty
Does not think there is any value for him there, melancholy impression
Conditions for Industrialization
in Europe: Summary
(1) The plantation and slave labour,
(2) legitimation of interest and technical innovation
(3) Natural resources and New organization of labour
(4) Global Trade
(5) New construction techniques unprecedented building Scales
(6) Urban concentration
Ghent and Brussel
Bauwens, an entrepreneur in Ghent and industrial spy between 1801-1802 Mayor
The prison is used as a factory, the convent as a factory, castles as factories.
Rasphuis, Carthusian monastery Gravensteen
Pictures of Hoegaerden en Cie 19th century
The Beluiken in Ghent, 1855 similar to impasses in Brussels, 1866
Small workers houses cramped next to each other, very sober interior and small
ceilings
Some number from Batavia Beluik: 100m long, 2,7m wide, 117 houses, 585
inhabitants, 6 latrines, 2 water pomps
-> profit made 18% at least, so profit was made at the expense of the
living quality of people
The problems:
1) Health: it was filthy cesspools of modern invention, a city of a city, everything that poisons and
shortens life, the crowding of houses and families, darkness humidity, infection
The factories are the cause of the existence of seas ends, deplorable abuse
constructions which compromise the health and life of a large part of the population
2) Discipline: hotbed of promiscuity, collective kitchen as a scene of criminal conspiracy, revolt and
alcoholism, cellar is wastewater and a breeding ground for diseases
, Chadwick, Report to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department
from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry into the sanitary condition of the labouring
population of Great Britain, 1842:
“a power and discipline almost as strong as that of a man-of-war, is requisite to preserve
order in such communities. it is desirable to avoid any arrangement which brings families into
close contact with each other.”
3) High Profit Rates Gained from Overcrowded and Unhealthy Housing Conditions
Beluik in Ghent
4) The Task: The creation of a non-waged housewife
The legitimation of interest leads to an increasing differentiation of gender attribution or
constructs:
1. the male (public) sphere where men compete in the pursuit of their individual (economic)
interest – an interest dedicated to economic and social investment in the (private)
household.
2. the female private and domestic sphere of motherly love, care and beauty.
Schinkel, Reisen ach England:
Beautiful children doing the work
It is a splendid construction of ashlar (Quaderstein, Haustein), with Ionic collumns, and is in
the best style both inside out.
Mr. Gott, a dignified and refined old gentleman, who has made millions in cloth manufacture,
received us kindly
several nice-looking daughters, one of whom spoke very good French to me; they were all very
well educated and musically and artistically talented
Some numbers and diagrams on the working women in Britain
You can see that women in paid employment goes down quite a bit and then slightly recovers.
Ducpétiaux, De la mortalité à Bruxelles, comparée à celle des autres grandes villes, Bruxelles, 1844.:
dans la classe des domestiques et journalières, pendant la periode de 1840 à 1842
sur 100 enfants il y avait 36 bâtards
nous choisissons les classes qui, par leur position, sont les plus exposéss à tomber dans le
désordre, Nous trouvons le résultat suivant
results of his research in ppt
Interpretation: