BUILDING SPATIAL CAPACITIES TO RETROFIT THE DISPERSED CITY: Exploring The Role Of Design

Abstract

Flanders is spatially dispersed. This mode of urbanisation comes with a high social cost. The current planning paradigm, strategic spatial planning, argues that the retrofitting of dispersed urbanisation requires a continuous public debate, and that such a debate depends on both a process of civic participation and a process of spatial capacity building. This paper researches how spatial designers can support this process of capacity building. It does this by discussing two explorative case studies.