Segregation and Economic Integration of Immigrants in Brussels

Abstract

During the 1960s and early 1970s, suburbanization was the most important process shaping Brussels’ socio-spatial structure. Fordist accumulation was based on the distribution of productivity gains over profit and wage increases. As such, growing mass production found a market in growing mass consumption. Houses, cars and consumer durables fuelled this growth. These goods required space and became visible because people bought or built houses on the urban fringe, commuted daily by car and accumulated consumer durables at home. Thus, suburbanization in Belgium was the spatial expression of Fordist economic growth. The changing class structure also supported the suburbanization process. Rising levels of education and the development of tertiary activities pushed the Belgian population into upward social mobility. The population of Brussels became increasingly middle class and could draw on its growing incomes to become the owner-occupiers of individual buildings of dwellings outside the city, in a green environment where land prices were affordable.