Brussels, Belgium
Brussels developed as an industrial center in the 19th century, though its manufacturing character was less dominant. The city’s industries were concentrated in working-class neighborhoods like Molenbeek, Anderlecht, Schaerbeek, and the canal zone, where factories produced textiles, machinery, beer, food products, and various consumer goods. The Brussels-Charleroi Canal, completed in 1832, became a crucial industrial artery with warehouses, factories, and port facilities lining its banks. Brussels was particularly known for its brewing industry, with numerous breweries established throughout the city, as well as metalworking, printing, and light manufacturing. The city’s industrial landscape featured brick factory buildings and worker housing, and the distinctive canal-side warehouses that characterized the working-class districts surrounding the historic center.
From the 1960s onward, Brussels experienced major deindustrialization as manufacturing declined and the city’s economy shifted toward its role as the de facto capital of the European Union, hosting EU institutions, international organizations, and service industries. The canal zone, once the heart of Brussels’s industrial economy, saw factories close and warehouses empty as traditional industries relocated or disappeared. By the 1980s and 1990s, vast stretches of the canal district and former industrial neighborhoods sat abandoned or underutilized. Belgium’s complex linguistic and political divisions, combined with Brussels’s fragmented governance across nineteen municipalities, shaped responses to post-industrial transformation in ways distinct from other European cities. The city developed some squat culture and alternative spaces, though less prominent than Berlin or Amsterdam, while also pursuing gradual urban regeneration strategies. Brussels’s post-industrial landscape today reflects tensions between luxury development pressures driven by EU expansion, efforts to preserve affordable housing and community spaces in working-class neighborhoods, and the challenges of coordinating urban policy across the city’s complicated administrative structure.
Recyclart
For over two decades, Recyclart functioned as a multidisciplinary cultural center in the Marolles, hosting concerts, exhibitions, theater, workshops, urban agriculture projects, and community initiatives. The venue became particularly known for its electronic music programming and experimental performances, attracting both local communities and international audiences. However, in 2018, SNCB terminated Recyclart’s lease to redevelop the original site, forcing the organization to relocate. Rather than closing entirely, Recyclart moved to a new location in Molenbeek, occupying a former industrial automobile facility that was renovated and transformed by Ouest Architecture. The new space, organized around a large central courtyard, continues Recyclart’s mission of combining three core activities: an arts center with capacity for up to 600 people hosting nightlife, concerts, lectures, performances, and participatory projects; Recyclart Fabrik, a craftsmanship center with wood, metal, and upcycling workshops that provides job training and professional integration for Brussels residents facing employment challenges; and Bar Recyclart, a restaurant offering vegan, vegetarian, and halal meals under the motto “we are all sitting at the same table.” While the relocation allowed Recyclart to survive and continue its work, the forced move from the Marolles illustrated the precarity of alternative cultural spaces even when they operate under formalized agreements, demonstrating that institutional landlords’ redevelopment priorities can ultimately override decades of community cultural production regardless of legal arrangements or public support.