The Rampart, The Traffic Artery, and the Park; Designing for the city regions of Antwerp

6.
Also called the ‘Dwight D. Eisenhower
National System of Interstate and
Defense Highways’. The system also
had certain military aspects, as the
highways would allow quick travel
(and evacuation) through the country
in case of an attack (History.com
Editors, 2019).
7.
The European Communities (EC) is the
predecessor of the European Union.
tive lack of housing, but also by a qualitative lack because of the destruction
during the war (Ter Heide & Smit, 2016; Hesse & Siedentop, 2018). The void
in cities that was the result of this de-urbanisation was filled by unskilled immigrant
workers, who had no problem with the low-quality housing. The suburbanisation
peaked during the 1960s and 1970s in most European countries;
a few countries were earlier, among them Belgium, The United Kingdom, and
Switzerland, who experienced their main suburbanisation during the 1950s.
The urbanisation further resulted in a more social and spatial segregation. The
new-found mobility that people had resulted in social groups living increasingly
further apart, in an increasingly homogenous composition (Rottiers, 2004).
Many countries introduced policy to structure and guide the suburbanisation,
the Netherlands for instance introduced its ‘groeikernen’ 6 (grow core) policy
which appointed specific locations for suburbs. This was to prevent the urbanisation
of (too much) rural land, and to prevent the Randstad from merging
together (Bruinsma & Koomen, 2018, pp. 32-34).
Growing realism
The optimism towards the car started to change in the seventies. In the United
States and Europe, commerce and industry started to leave the city due to
suburbanisation in favour of the open rural area, creating large business parks
and shopping malls. As a result of all this urban sprawl, traffic congestion was
on the rise, and was becoming a serious problem (Animesh, n.d.; Vidová,
2010, p. 43; Rottiers, 2004); Melosi, 2010).
Another reason for the changing attitude towards the car, was the
increasing awareness for climate change. A growing movement initiated by the
publication of The Limits to Growth from the Club of Rome. This report showed
the world for the first time, using computer simulations, that the earth could
probably not support the current rates of economic and population growth
beyond the year 2100, if it would even last that long, even with advancements
in technology (The Club of Rome, n.d.). Two consecutive oil crises added
momentum to the message from the Club of Rome, the first one in 1973 and
the second in 1979. The former let to Europe-wide car-free (Sun)days (Stapel,
2017, p. 26; Kettell, n.d.). In the Netherlands a total of ten car-free Sundays
were held between 1973-1974, and in Belgium six times between the same
period (Wikipedia, 2020). This growing awareness for, and discussion about,
the environment led to the introduction ‘Environmental Impact Statements’ in
many countries around the world from the 1970s onward. These documents
described the positive and negative environmental effects of a proposed plan
or project, and were meant to help decision making. The United States was the
first country to adopt these statements in 1970, in the following years and the
1980s, Canada, Japan, and Australia would follow as well. The EC 7 also pro-
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