Sillon industriel and beyond

Le Sillon Industriel stretches from the border with France across Wallonia to the border with the Netherlands. The oldest mines (in green) were already in use in the Middle Ages. Because the coal seams lay shallow mining for coal meant little more than digging holes in the ground or digging on the sides of deep river gorges (for instance around the Wurm). In the actual Industrial Valley mining took off after 1810 (shown here in orange). Especially around Liège ironworks were built (shown on the map as "i" ). Around the same time (from about 1820) the small scale mining north of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) was scaled up (also shown in orange). In between these two zinc mines (shown in blue) are located. Around these mines and near Liège zinc factories (indicated with "z") were first built. From around 1900 zinc production expanded northwards to the sparingly populated Campine region. From 1880 onwards but mostly after 1900 mining was expanded west of the ancient and medieval mining sites around Rolduc (Hertogenrade/Herzogenrath). Here many mines were founded in a rather isolated rural area (mines shown in red) around Heerlen, Kerkrade, Schaesberg, Nieuwenhagen, Brunssum, Hoensbroek and Geleen. After 1900 this development moved even further west into Belgium where several large mines (shown in violet) were established. North of these coalfields lignite was mined from about 1900 in open-pit mines (shown in yellow). This is the only form of mining still in practice in this area today!

Industrial revolution: Continental frontrunner Belgium

Belgium was the second country, after Britain, in which the industrial revolution took place and the first in continental Europe. Starting in the middle of the 1810s, and expanding rapidly  after Belgium became an independent nation in 1830, numerous works comprising coke blast furnaces as well as iron works were built in the coal mining areas around Liège and Charleroi. Wallonia (French speaking southern Belgium) was the first region to follow the British model - pioneered from 1760 onward - successfully. The industrialization of Belgium precedes the generally accepted second industrial revolution, when this way of large scale production spread across Europe and Northern America from around 1860 onwards. The second industrial revolution  -according to most historians - started with the invention of steel production by Henry Bessemer in 1855. This Bessemer-process made mass production of steel possible. He also applied himself, unsuccessfully, to the mechanized large scale production of sheet glass.

The groundwork for this was laid by King William I, who had a keen eye for business en invested heavily in industrial activity in the south of his country (the United Kingdom of the Netherlands that encompassed the present day Benelux). He founded the Generale Maatschappij (later: Société Générale de Belgique) in 1822 and the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (Dutch Trade Company) in 1824. He was very involved in improving existing canals, constructing locks and digging new shipping canals. Some like the Zuid-Willemsvaart still bare his name. King William I also supported William Cockerill in building the largest steam engine plant in Seraing near Liège in 1817. Cockerills company went on to build the first Belgian steamboat in 1820 and the first continental steam locomotive in 1835.

Industrialization had already started during the French occupation of the Low Countries during the first decades of the nineteenth century. These developments were isolated and involved mainly the mechanization of older industries such as cloth making, weaving, saw-milling and the production of cast iron and wrought iron. The locality not seldom the site  of earlier exploitation. In the Borinage region of Wallonia mining started early on (before 1700). The region even gets its name from this; borin or borain means miner in French. The equivalent in the local Picardian dialect is bohren.

The rapid development of extraction and production industries also meant a great demand for workers, supervisors, technical specialists, engineers, etcetera. More often than not the local population was not sufficient to meet demand, which lead to significant migration. The workers had to be provided with housing. Some early examples of this can be found in La Grand Hornu (1810) in Boussu near Mons and Bois du Luc (1838) in Houdeng-Aimeries near La Louvière.

The industry in the so-called Sillon Industriel  (the Industrial Valley) brought much wealth to Belgium, and it was the economic core of the young country. This continued until after World War II, when the importance of Belgian steel, coal and industry began to diminish. This Industrial Valley ran from Mons (Bergen) via Charleroi, Namur (Namen) and Liège (Luik) to Verviers and closely followed a large seam of coal. Beyond Verviers zinc mines were situated around Plombières, Kelmis and Moresnet. Another coal seam is to be found more to the north. This coalfield extends into Germany via the Netherlands and is known as the Mijnstreek. Even further north is the large German coalfield in the Ruhr-basin.

The coalfields in Belgium and The Netherlands are a part of a larger area with coal that runs from Pas-de-Calais (1) in the north of France via the Borinage and Carbonage Central (2), the Meuse basin at Liège (3), the Mijnstreek (4) and the Peel-basin (5) tot the Ruhr-basin (6). The Z signifies the location of several zinc mines.

Factory villages

In contrast to the company towns in North America and Asia, similar initiatives in western Europe usually take the form of a factory village. Both company town and factory village are characterized by the ownership of much or all real estate, buildings, amenities and business premises by a single company. Traditionally such company towns and factory villages were linked to extractive industries (coal, metal and sand) and manufacturing of bulk goods (glass, iron, textiles, etcetera). Typically these urbanized areas were developed in an isolated location and centered around a large production facility (a factory, ironworks or colliery). Most citizens will be directly or indirectly affiliated to the company. The goal of these settlements was after all to house the workers close to the production site. The term is now used to distinguish urban areas that are or were closely linked to a certain employer.

Factory villages tend to be much smaller in scale then for instance their American and Russian counterparts the company towns. Another difference is that most factory villages were developed just outside of existing towns and villages and only on rare occasions far from established communities. 

Early examples of workers housing can be characterized as colonies. These colonies are stand alone developments with a very regular layout of long parallel streets. A special type within these colonies are the development on the so-called Lotharingian model (pioneered in Alsace-Lorraine) with four dwellings within one building between two parallel lanes. Workers colonies were mainly built in the latter half of the nineteenth century. After 1890 we see different models appear in both Germany and England, the so-called model villages where a social reform agenda is expressed through workers housing and cultural facilities.

After 1900, and especially after 1918, workers housing is offered as part of a total package for employees that also includes sporting clubs, music groups, schools, sanitation (bathhouses and washhouses), parks, allotment gardens, shops, medical practice and so-on. The combination of socio-liberal ideas and the garden city movement led to a flurry of small and large scale developments were entrepreneurs would build garden villages (sometimes called garden city - Gartenstadt in German) for their employees and their families next to their factories or at least close by. Sometimes the land was to expensive in the immediate vicinity of the factory so they looked at farmland further afield. These developments never take on the size of a town, but are standalone villages or neigbourhoods near or in preexisting towns and villages. In rare cases such as Genk in Belgium, Eindhoven in the Netherlands and Essen in Germany urbanization was mainly instigated by factory villages*.

Housing linked to manufacturers in Eindhoven makes up most of the city up until 1960. The company Phillips did not only provide housing but also laid out parks and sporting grounds. DAF provided both housing and playing fields. Bata provided housing and facilities next to the factory. Other manufactures such as Van Abben, Mignot & DeBlock, Mennen-Keunen, Karel I Sigarenfabrieken, Pijnenburgh and Picus relied on private initiative to build houses for their workers. Within a red outline the factory housing (often called village) is marked. They are often near the factory sites (in yellow). In orange the workers housing built by building societies (Woningbouwverenigingen) is colored in. Within the pink outline we find  the villa parks. 

In Germany (Ruhrgebiet), England (West Midlands) and South Limburg (Oostelijke Mijnstreek) the many isolated colonies, factory villages and workers neigbourhoods together with post war developments merged into conurbations that often also include medieval hamlets, old towns and villages. Neigbourhoods erected for housing miners are usually called colony (Kolonie in both Dutch and German). This is even the case if they take the shape of a garden village. Garden villages are called Gartensiedlung (garden settlement) in Germany and Austria, Tuindorp (garden village) in the Netherlands and Tuinwijk (garden neigbourhood) in Flanders. In Germany and Austria they also speak of Gartenstadt (garden city) to designate apartment blocks in a green setting, similar to the way Cité-jardin is used in France and Tuinstad in the Netherlands. This type of Garden city always concerns municipal housing.    

* In the case of both Genk and Essen the initial urbanization was linked to mining.

Iconic urban shapes: Wiener Ringstraße

Most urban centers or urbanized areas have some sort of icon that is supposed to signify that specific city and add to a sense of identity. Most often these icons are buildings; one only needs to think of the Eifel tower in Paris, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco, The Colosseum in Rome,  the Guggenheim-museum in Bilbao, the Kremlin complex in Moscow, the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Atomium in Brussels and so on.

Only rarely will the shape of the city be iconic. 

Few people will recognize any major city from its layout. Depending on the excision some cities will produce a recognizable image. A good example is the old city of Amsterdam with the iconic semicircle of 3 broad canals (the Grachtengordel). Other examples include the urban grid of Manhattan with the Central Park in the middle, The Ring road around the old centre of Vienna (Wiener Ringstraße), the star like layout of Karlruhe, the fanning avenues of Washington, the bird figure of Brasilia, Canberra with its axis shooting off a circle and an octagon, the rather similar New Delhi and the diagonally cut grid of Barcelona. 

Most cities, especially those on a grid plan are not easily distinguishable from one another. Not many people will be able to draw a map of the grid plans of for instance Helsinki, Leopoldsburg, Mannheim or Düsseldorf. Water cities -another example- have certain characteristics in common; they are located at the confluence of a smaller river with a larger one, will have a more or less rounded outline, one or more large open spaces within the urban fabric of streets and angular connections to radial roads. Yet few people will be able to distinguish the cities of Leiden, Gouda, Utrecht, Groningen, Leuven, Ghent, Bruges, Duisburg, Bremen, Wesel, Lübeck, Jülich or Heilbronn on the basis of their morphology alone.    

    

The Ringstraße (literally: Ring Street), together with the Franz-Josef-Kai, encompasses the historic center of Vienna and is one of the tourist attractions of the city. Although divided in 9 seperatly named roads the colloquial term is der Wiener Ring. This ring road is the most important nineteenth century intervention in the Viennese urban landscape and forms the backbone of a number of formal ensembles of mostly public buildings.

The Ringstraße was constructed between 1857-65 after dismantling the fortifications. It was laid out on the Glacis and the former bulwarks (Basteien in German). The terrain was filled in and the urban landscape was wiped out for a second time (the first time of coarse was when the glacis was constructed at the expense of the then present suburbs outside the city walls). The ringroad with its squares and buildings has been designated as a world heritage site together with the old city that it encircles.

There are no less than five ensembles that make up the Ringstraße. The streetscape connects the old inner city area with the baroque city around the glacis within the Gürtel.