Unlocking the potential of collective spaces in All City/All Land

This research focuses on the collective spaces in the dispersed urban condition of Flanders, a condition we started to name All City/All Land. The aim of the research is to develop a theoretical understanding of these collective spaces in the dispersed urban condition and to develop an attitude for design interventions. A first part of the work deepens the knowledge of All City/All Land, interpreting it both as an existing condition and as a future project. All City/All Land is not to be described as sprawl or suburbia but as a deliberate economic, social, and political project that originated in the 19th century as a response to the industrialisation. By an 'in-situ urbanisation of a manmade landscape' the whole territory was included in an urbanisation that dissolved the dichotomy between urban/rural. Moreover, in the research it is made clear that the territories of dispersion are in many cases not a recent emerging phenomenon but can be inscribed in a long tradition, provoking a shift in the urban paradigm and describing All City/All Land as an urban condition. At present this urban paradigm of dispersion has however reached a tipping point by which the supportive strata are no longer able to coop with a continuation of the urbanisation and provoke the need to redefine the urban form of All City/All Land. In this redefinition the collective spaces will play a key-role as places where a living together is expressed. Building upon the insights and evaluation of a competition held for Hoog-Kortrijk in the 1990's, a competition that addresses public spaces in the dispersed context and that was followed by a realisation of the winning proposal, it became clear that the vocabulary, the lens of the traditional city cannot be used in All City/All Land. Deepening this insight in a second part of the work, gives rises to the statement that the use of frameworks, notions, and concepts for public spaces based on the traditional city but applied in All City/All Land leads to an Agraphia & Dyslexia, or a state of incorrect reading and writing. Applying the lens of the traditional city in the context of All City/All Land even so addresses the wrong spaces. Focussing strictly on the consolidated public spaces of All City/All Land excludes an enormous variety of collective destinations, destinations indicated by the inhabitants as the spaces were there public life takes place. These spaces are public in their use and appropriation, spaces of gathering and a confrontati