Social sustainability in historic city centres: the Grand Place in Brussels

Abstract

This chapter describes research designed is to explore effective methods for the socially-sustainable development of historic urban city centre’s characterised by a rich and diverse cultural heritage, without losing their identity. It was carried out, and its framework tested and evaluated, in the surrounding ‘buffer zone’ of the UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) of the ‘Grand Place’ in Brussels, an area characterised by low levels of occupancy. The main research questions are how sustainability and heritage relate to one another and whether socially-sustainable development can be reconciled within heritage conservation. A conceptual and methodological framework consisting of a set of social indicators is developed that can describe integrated sustainable development and which can be applied in urban planning processes of those vulnerable sites.