Cités-Jardins, the implementation of new ideas on planning in Brussels

Belgium had a tradition of building housing for workers by enlightened factory owners from the late 18th century, especially in the francophone part of the country. These ideas were subsequently exported to for instance the new mining area in the Flemish Campine region. Building social housing remained however a private enterprise with little to no guidance by the government. The idea(l)s of the Garden City Movement struck a chord with architects and the labour movement, but politicians remained wary of any state intervention into the housing market. This changed after WW1 when socialism became an important political force and the devastations of war created opportunities to improve the urban landscape and the living conditions of the working classes.

From 1918 the Belgian government declared housing a priority and implemented a plan to rebuilt the great number of destroyed buildings by introducing planning and state-funded social housing. Brussels was already developing rapidly before the Great War, but many more people were drawn there afterwards due to the devastations endured by the countryside. Garden villages and planning both stemmed from the ideas of the Garden City Movement and provided an economic choice as repetition, standardisation and a limited number of materials could provide for a rapid roll-out of new housing. In Belgium these Cités-Jardins or Tuinwijken are often little more than neighbourhoods or small garden villages, new garden city satellites were never planned.

For their construction and management special housing associations were founded. Many of these have their roots in the labour movement with a strong focus on communal facilities. Housing took the shape of terraced family houses with large gardens, apartments and lodging houses. Allotment gardens are never part of the Cité-Jardin in Belgium. Seen as urban living in the countryside these housing projects also provided a good living environment for the influx from rural communities not adapted to living in the city.

Around Brussels only 16 garden villages were developed, mostly between 1918 and 1930. The first was Cité sociale de Jouët-Rey in Etterbeek completed in 1909. Development stalled until during the boom years many garden villages were completed: Cité de la Roue (1908,1923 & 1928), Cité de Moortebeek (1922), Cité-Van-Lindt (1922), Cité Floréal (1922), Cité Le Logis (1923), Cité Forest-Vert (1923), La Cité Diongre (1923), Cité Bon Air (1923), Cité de Tuinbouw (1924), La Cité Moderne (1925),  Cité Verregat (1926), Cité Kapelleveld (1926), Cité Terdelt (1926) and la Cité du Homborch (1930). The economic crises of the 1930s prevented the construction of many planned garden villages. Of these only the Cité à Bon Marché d'Auderghem was built between 1949 and 1952. The focus in planned house building shifted towards the ideas of CIAM. The Cité Modèle designed by the famous architect Renaat Braam as a model of future social housing is an early example from 1958.

All the garden villages and neighbourhoods were developed on the rural outskirts of the city and still encircle the old city (in red). They are no longer suburban exclaves, but rather rural enclaves within the  expanded city. The Cités-Jardins of Brussels are: Cité sociale de Jouët-Rey (>),  Cité-Van-Lindt (1), Cité à Bon Marché d'Auderghem (2),Cité Le Logis (3), Cité Floréal (4), Cité du Homborch (5), Cité Forest-Vert (6), Cité de la Roue (7), Cité Bon Air (8), Cité de Moortebeek (9), La Cité Diongre (10), La Cité Moderne (11),  Cité Verregat (12), Cité Terdelt (13), Cité de Tuinbouw (14), Cité Kapelleveld (15) and la Cité Modèle (_*).