Research project HL/DD/18 (Research action HL)
This project is focused on the interactions between the inhabitants of Belgium and their environment. The latter will be considered each individual’s daily living space, in which both strictly natural (landscape, pollution, noise, etc.) and socio-economic and cultural factors (work, housing, conviviality, feelings of insecurity, etc.) play a part. The aim of combining these two notions - the people and their environment - is to develop a sustainable regional planning policy. The latter will be viable and fully effective only if these two spheres develop in perfect harmony with each other. Our overall aim is to construct a tool that must of course increase our knowledge but above all lay a sound foundation for development policies and serve as a local management instrument.
Our project is characterised by its demographic approach and taking the locality (commune) as the spatial unit of reference. The people as both players and common denominator are the key variable to achieve our aim, while the demographic approach is a must. However, our approach would be incomplete and in any event insufficient if our contribution was limited to ‘doing demographics’ in the strict sense of the term. Demographic characteristics and behaviour do not occur in a vacuum. Their diversity and development can be explained only in connection with other social, economic, and cultural variables. More generally, the tool that we are proposing will be truly effectively only if bridges are built between demography and the humanities and environmental management sciences as a group and, with a more pragmatic vision, towards all the other areas of local management. Next, our approach is resolutely geared to the locality and its subunits. We ardently wish to venture into a field that most demographers prefer to keep at a distance, a field in direct contact with individuals and their habitats, where socio-demographic differences and inequality show up most clearly. This is where sustainable development policies must be rooted first and foremost. More specifically, we shall investigate two main topics, namely, population movements and local socio-demographic characteristics and differences.
First of all, population movements (approx. 900,000 housing moves a year) are the most intense, dynamic, and malleable, but also the least well known, of demographic phenomena. Under cover of urbanization and its various phases (suburbanization, peri-urbanization, etc.), moving house is the main agent of the population’s spatial redistribution and the spread of settlements. The fundamental part played by mobility is one of the major singularities of local demographics and regional planning and development. Next, these movements, which are closely linked to property market conditions, have disrupt local ecosystems and landscape units. Moving house and migratory flows, which determine to a great extent the rises and falls in localities’ populations, are constantly changing localities’ demographic profiles, changing the compositions of households and families, and, gradually changing the mentalities and features specific to each place. This migratory dynamism is not free of risk, which obviously must be pinpointed and managed as well as possible. We can mention, for example, the social imbalances that are predicated by the housing supply or the clustering of elderly people that is linked to the spread of housing site.
Now, optimal sustainable local development must be rooted in not only up-to-date knowledge of a locality’s socio-demographic characteristics but above all the differences and inequality that may be encountered within the locality’s borders. Forgetting, ignoring, or misjudging these differences lead to simplistic, misleading generalisations. Only a ‘descent’ to the infra-locality level can enable one to identify and study the ‘neighbourhoods at risk’, anomic situations, and areas in crisis and thus to paint a true picture of Belgium’s social demography.
Methods
This study is based on an incredibly rich unpublished database resulting from combining the 1991 population and housing census with the data in Belgium’s National Registry for 1991 to 1998.
We are using two methods, to wit:
1) conventional demographic aggregate analysis (tempered by the problems specific to small sample size - see L XY); and
2) Event History Analysis models developed using the computerised national registry’s data.
Our analysis of mobility in the city of Namur (‘The neighbourhood: to leave or to stay’) is an example of how we are applying these two methods.
The starting point of the analysis‘The neighbourhood: to leave or to stay’ already done over the city of Namur was twofold, namely, to consider mobility amongst the various neighbourhoods of the city but also the individual aspirations underpinning these movements. We present a new, more positive, vision of the city that sees the city as a segregated area but nevertheless allows individuals’ changing aspirations, needs, and plans to move to be fulfilled in the course of their lives.
Working paper n° 9: Dualisation ou Homogénéisation de l'espace Wallon? Un premier éclairage socio-économique
Michel Oris (ULg)
Working Paper n°10 :De l’utilité de la démographie appliquée aux besoins locaux
Michel Poulain (UCL- GEDAP)
Démographie, aménagement du territoire et développement durable de la société belge: rapport final
Oris, Michel - Poulain, Michel - Capron, Catherine ...... et al. Bruxelles: SSTC, 2001 (SP0771)
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Démographie, aménagement du territoire et développement durable de la société belge: annexes 1, 3 à 9
Oris, Michel - Poulain, Michel - Capron, Catherine ...... et al. Bruxelles: SSTC, 2001 (SP0772)
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Démographie, aménagement du territoire et développement durable de la société belge: annexe 2: cartes
Oris, Michel - Poulain, Michel - Capron, Catherine ...... et al. Bruxelles: SSTC, 2001 (SP0773)
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Démographie, aménagement du territoire et développement durable de la société belge: synthèse
Oris, Michel - Poulain, Michel - Capron, Catherine ...... et al. Bruxelles: SSTC, 2001 (SP0774)
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Demography, town and countryside management and sustainable development: summary
Oris, Michel - Poulain, Michel - Capron, Catherine ...... et al. Brussels: OSTC, 2001 (SP0775)
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