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Social Mix and Passive Revolution. A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of theSocial Mix Rhetoric in Flanders, BelgiumMaarten P. J. Loopmans a; Pascal de Decker b;Chris Kesteloot c
a Catholic University of Leuven, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Brussels, Belgium b UniversityCollege Ghent, Department of Industrial Sciences, Saint-Lucas School of Architecture, Ghent -Brussels, Belgium c Catholic University of Leuven, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Leuven,Belgium
Online publication date: 18 February 2010
To cite this Article Loopmans, Maarten P. J. , de Decker, Pascal andKesteloot, Chris(2010) 'Social Mix and PassiveRevolution. A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of the Social Mix Rhetoric in Flanders, Belgium', Housing Studies, 25: 2, 181 —200To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/02673030903561826URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02673030903561826
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Social Mix and Passive Revolution.A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of the SocialMix Rhetoric in Flanders, Belgium
MAARTEN P. J. LOOPMANS*, PASCAL DE DECKER** &CHRIS KESTELOOT†
*Catholic University of Leuven, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Leuven, Belgium; also, Erasmus University
College Brussels, STeR*-Urban Design and Spatial Planning, Brussels, B-1070 Belgium, **University College
Ghent, Department of Industrial Sciences, Saint-Lucas School of Architecture, Ghent - Brussels, Belgium,†Catholic University of Leuven, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Leuven, Belgium
(Received November 2008; revised August 2009)
ABSTRACT Belgium’s housing policy has always been instrumental in the pillarisation process. As aconsequence, two competing historical models have existed: first, a model promoted by the socialistpillar based on social rental housing in urban settings; second, the model put forward by thehegemonic Catholic party, emphasising the promotion of homeownership of single-family dwellings inrural settings. When this second, anti-urban model, became the main housing model for the masses inthe post-war period, its spatial layout was one of sprawl and disinvestment in urban neighbourhoods.However, from the 1970s onwards, various actors have contested this policy. In response, policymakers have turned to a discourse of inner-city social mix. However, this discourse was barelytranslated into practice and did not affect the hegemonic model. Following Gramsci, this paperanalyses how social mix has primarily served as an instrument for passive revolution, by deviating anddisempowering counter-hegemonic attacks on the leading model of suburban homeownership.
KEY WORDS: Housing policy, neighbourhoods, urban regeneration, Flanders, Gramsci, social mix
Introduction
Advocacy of ’social mix’ (also referred to as ’social diversity’ or ’social balance’) has a
long history, dating back to the mid-19th century (Arthurson, 2008; Sarkissian &
Warwick, 1978). Sarkissian (1976) demonstrated how the idea that, at a certain spatial
scale, the composition of the population should reflect the diversity of wider society was
an ideal in planning throughout the 20th century (see also Arthurson, 2008).
Recent renewed interest in ‘social mixing’ in Europe has re-invigorated scientific
debate on its effects (Galster, 2007; Kleinhans, 2004; Musterd & Andersson, 2005;
ISSN 0267-3037 Print/1466-1810 Online/10/020181–20 q 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/02673030903561826
Correspondence Address: Maarten P. J. Loopmans, Catholic University of Leuven, Earth and Environmental
Sciences, Celestijnenlaan 200E, Leuven B-3001 Belgium. Email: [email protected]
Housing Studies,Vol. 25, No. 2, 181–200, March 2010
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Ostendorf et al., 2001; Ruming et al., 2004). In general, these studies echo earlier analyses
(e.g. Gans, 1961; Kuper, 1953; Orlans, 1952), being critical of social mixing policies.
Their sophisticated models show moderately positive results at best, raising the question of
whether such meagre results legitimise widespread policy attention.
This paper will avoid this classical social engineering point of view that permeates so
many social studies on the issue. The study will leave aside whether social mix can or
cannot be effectively or efficiently deployed to achieve certain policy goals.
Instead, the paper focuses on the historical political rationalities which lie behind the
social mix rhetoric and tries to answer why social mix is used as a policy instrument.
In doing so, it ties in with an emerging field of research on the governance dimension
of social mix (Cole & Goodchild, 2001; Flint, 2006; Haworth & Manzi, 1999;
Uitermark, 2003; Uitermark et al., 2007). Much of the existing literature in this field is
inspired by Foucault’s (2004) conceptualisation of governmentality. The governmentality
concept has been developed further by, among others, by Rose (1996), Dean (1999) and
Cruikshank (1999), who propose that welfare policies are increasingly instrumental for
governing ‘at a distance’ the moral behaviour of individual subjects. In housing studies,
the focus is on how housing policy in general and social mix in particular is instrumental in
‘governing the everyday life’ of individuals (Dufty, 2007; Flint, 2002, 2004; McDermont,
2004; Uitermark, 2003; Uitermark et al. 2007). Flint (2002, 2004), for example, has
examined how tenant behavioural control has become a central occupation of UK social
housing agencies; Uitermark et al., (2007) demonstrate how in the Netherlands
‘social mix’ has been used strategically to install dispersed forms of governmental control
in ‘problematic’ neighbourhoods.
The perspective of this paper distinguishes itself from the governmentality approach in
that it does not aim to deconstruct the way social mix is deployed for governing people’s
everyday behaviour and conduct; rather, the focus is on the way a social mix rhetoric
is instrumental for forging political support and is put to use in political power struggles.
The study built upon Gramsci’s theorising of hegemony and passive revolution to
understand why the social mix rhetoric has become so pervasive in urban and housing
policy discourses in Flanders. Gramsci (2001) is an interesting source of inspiration for
this question as he combines institutional and economic analysis with less tangible
questions of ideology and discourse (Loopmans, 2008). The analysis begins with the
finding that social mix in Flanders, while being on the agenda since the 1970s, has
maintained a marginal position in policy making.
This paper will explore why that has been the case; the argument is that the social mix
rhetoric has been deployed to establish what Gramsci called ‘passive revolution’ in
relation to urban development. Belgian (or Flemish, for that matter) urbanisation policies
have always been characterised by deeply entrenched anti-urbanism, prioritising
peripheral, low-density developments as opposed to central dense neighbourhoods.
Since the 1960s this chosen path has been challenged from a number of perspectives.
Social mix then was an instrumental means to pacify and co-opt those challengers so that
the essence of the anti-urban policy was maintained.
The following section elaborates upon Gramscian theory on the political role of
discourse and introduces the concepts of hegemony and passive revolution. These
concepts are deployed in the sections thereafter to understand how social mix was
instrumental in deflecting challenges to the hegemonic anti-urban model. The final section
182 M. P. J. Loopmans et al.
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analyses how social mix affects the power of the traditional counter-hegemonic model of
social rental housing in urban settings.
Gramsci, Hegemony and Discourse
One of the most influential ideas in Gramsci’s political theory is ‘hegemony’. Gramsci
introduced the concept to capture the ‘ideological predominance of bourgeois values and
norms over the subordinate classes’ (Carnoy, 1984, p. 66). Hegemony allows the state to
rule by consent rather than coercion, and connects to Gramsci’s understanding of the state
as deeply intertwined with civil society (the integral state). In a diverse society with a
variety of different and opposing interests, hegemony is always potentially unstable. There
is always the risk that counter-hegemonic discourses are produced by social groups whose
interests are not furthered by the operation of the state.
These discourses threaten to undermine widespread popular consent. To sustain
hegemony, the state engages in a hegemonic project, a permanent ‘consciously planned
struggle for hegemony’ (Gill, 2003, p. 58; Jessop, 1997, p. 62) involving the active search
for compromises, shared interests, common goals, institutional links with various social
forces in civil society and the development of a common, congruent discourse to win the
public’s hearts and minds. Ives (2004) explains how the transformation, reinterpretation
and reordering of words and concepts are important political activities.
The goal is to achieve a common language, not a singular dominant interpretation of
everything that happens in the world and all human activity. Various and opposing
perspectives can be expressed in such a language. (Ives, 2004, p. 114)
Using military terminology, Gramsci (2001) describes such an active and conscious
development of alliances around a common worldview as a ‘war of position’ and
emphasises how it is more important than and must precede a ‘war of manoeuvre’ to take
over state power. As in actual warfare, the trench war ultimately determines the success or
failure of the war of manoeuvre.
Gramsci introduces the concept of ‘passive revolution’ to refer to the situation where
such a war of position results in ‘a revolution without revolution’:
Changes occur and often they are reactions to problems and tensions of previous
political and economic arrangements, but they rarely resolve such problems and are
not really democratic in the true sense of the term—they do not come from
the people. Rather, leaders propose policies that the people do not reject. (Ives, 2004,
p. 104)
Passive revolution is realised by creatively re-shaping state discourses to incorporate the
claims of adversaries without changing the core of the hegemonic project. Early 20th
century fascism was such a passive revolution vis-a-vis the labour movement, in that
it socialised economic production, without, however, socialising profits (Gramsci, 2001,
p. 1227–1229). Hence, the potential development of counter-hegemonic discourses is
curbed, although the hegemonic project receives no ‘active’ support of civil society.
In Gramsci’s writings, passive revolution appears to entail various strategies. It can
include (1) the incorporation, in the hegemonic state structure, of the counter-hegemonic
Social Mix and Passive Revolution 183
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forces’ leaders and movements (Gramsci, 2001, pp. 962–963); (2) the development
of policy practices that incorporate some claims of the counter-hegemonic project
while ignoring others, in a way that the counter-hegemonic project loses its coherence
and importance for parts of the movement (Gramsci, 2001, pp. 1227–1229); and
(3) the (discursive) concealment of some of the various counter-hegemonic claims
(Gramsci, 2001, p. 1325). The following sections will first analyse the hegemonic project
of urbanisation as it developed in the early post-war period. Next, in different stages, there
will be an attempt to understand how counter-hegemonic forces challenged this project,
and how the state and its organisations reacted with what can be considered to be passive
revolution (see Table 1 for an overview). Particular attention will be given to the various
strategies by which social mix has been deployed as an instrument to establish passive
revolution. The analysis will focus at the regional level, where, since 1973, the main
competences in the field of urbanisation reside. However, for a full understanding of
regional urbanisation politics, it will be necessary to also provide a picture of the practices
of the largest Flemish cities Antwerp and Ghent. Indeed, political as well as institutional
links between those two cities and the regional government have created a situation where
social and political developments in these cities have had a serious impact upon policy
formulation at the regional level (see Loopmans et al., 2002).
Institutionalised Anti-urbanism as the Background of the Social Mix Debate
This section describes the development of the hegemonic post-war project of urbanisation
in Flanders. It examines the social and political forces behind it, describes its core concepts
and explains the relative powerlessness of the main historical counter-hegemonic model.
Flemish urbanisation is characterised by sprawl. The origins of this can be traced back
to the geography of the 19th century Belgian Industrial Revolution and its political
consequences (Kesteloot & De Maesschalck, 2001; Saey et al., 1998). The Industrial
Revolution gave rise to a Walloon industrial axis where the concentration of workers in
cities incited secularisation and socialism, threatening Catholic cultural and political
domination.
Apart from Ghent, industrialisation and urbanisation arrived much later in Flanders.
This allowed time for the Catholic Church to reorganise (Gerard, 1998; Joyce & Lewin,
1967) and defend its dominance in industrialising Flanders. From the late 19th century
onwards, the Catholic ‘pillar’ resisted the concentration of workers in large cities and
actively promoted family values and community cohesion by stimulating commuting and
homeownership in detached houses in peripheral rural areas. Conversely, its main
alternative, the socialist movement intended to stimulate class cohesion. Hence, socialists
promoted the concentration of workers in (urban) working-class neighbourhoods,
preferably in mass public housing to prevent workers getting a taste of capitalist
property-ownership.
Whereas socialists were numerous in the Walloon industrial axis, Catholic hegemony
retained its strongholds in more populous Flanders and Wallonia’s rural south. As a result,
the Catholic pillar remained hegemonic in unitary Belgium and was able to successfully
implement its containment strategy vis-a-vis the socialist movement through housing and
planning policies (Marissal et al., 2007; Mort Subite, 1990; Mougenot, 1988). In 1948, the
Catholic law ‘De Taeye’—widely considered to be the apex of approximately a century of
Catholic housing and planning policies (Theunis, 2006)—installed a premium for the
184 M. P. J. Loopmans et al.
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construction of ‘moderate’ houses by private owners. State support for homeownership
was underpinned by a massive Catholic ideological campaign to install a ‘rural Flemish
housing culture’ around the rural single-family house ideal (Flore, 2006). Making
peripheral individual detached housing into the prime model for post-war mass housing,
the policy enjoyed widespread public support (Loopmans, 2008). Twenty years later, more
than 400 000 De Taeye premiums had been conceded, mostly to Flemish builders. More
than one-third of all Belgian post-war new housing construction was co-financed this way
(Theunis, 2006). Furthermore, Belgian town planning legislation was purposively
generous in designating land for housing to guarantee housing affordability while post-war
Keynesian infrastructure provision supported the development of remote areas. Together,
planning legislation, Keynesian development and De Taeye resulted in unprecedented
sprawl. Meanwhile, urban mass social housing remained the main ideological alternative,
but it never achieved cultural hegemony in Belgium or Flanders and could not compete
with private homeownership in terms of housing production. As a result, social rental
housing today accounts for less than 6 per cent of the housing stock in Flanders, ranging
from approximately 10 per cent in a small number of cities to 0 per cent in many suburban
and rural municipalities. The stock caters for only half of the families entitled to social
housing under current legislation, resulting in long waiting lists and waiting times
(Heylen et al., 2007).
With limited access to social housing and no means to become homeowners,
lower-income groups are predominantly dependent upon a largely unregulated private
rental market which comprises nearly 20 per cent of the housing market (De Decker et al.,
2009a) and is concentrated in a limited number of (mainly 19th-century) urban
neighbourhoods (Vanderstraeten et al., 2008).
Inner City Social Mix as an Answer to Urban Mobilisation
While strongly supported by the general public, the hegemonic project of Belgian
suburbanisation soon revealed its negative side effects to the critical observer.
Increasingly, (green) open space was consumed for housing, while inner-city office and
traffic infrastructure construction demolished the traditional urban tissue. A poor minority
remained ‘unserved’ in the housing market and finally, inner cities experienced serious
disinvestment, resulting in fiscal problems for the local state.
From the 1960s onwards, these problems became more apparent and contestation
increased. This section (see Table 1) analyses the claims made through counter-hegemonic
mobilisations. In addition, it describes how the state engaged in passive revolution in order
to restabilise the hegemonic urbanisation project of suburban sprawl. More specifically,
social mix became a crucial element of this passive revolution and contributed to the three
strategies identified by Gramsci: (1) incorporation of (parts of) the contending movement;
(2) partially addressing the claims of the movement; and (3) discursively concealing
claims of the movement.
During the late 1960s, urban social movements started campaigning against the
combination of sprawl and demolition of urban heritage sites and residential
neighbourhoods (Buyck, 1988; De Smit, 2003; Verschueren, 2003, p. 165). They joined
forces with environmentalists, criticising urban sprawl for the loss of open space and the
stimulation of car traffic and found support among young urban planners (e.g. Anselin,
1967; Vanhavre; 1967). These groups formulated their criticisms about suburbanisation
Social Mix and Passive Revolution 185
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Table
1.
So
cial
mix
and
pas
siv
ere
vo
luti
on
:su
mm
ary
.
Ch
alle
ng
erC
riti
qu
era
ised
So
cia
lm
ixan
dp
ass
ive
rev
olu
tio
nC
on
seq
uen
ces
for
soci
alre
nta
lh
ou
sin
gm
od
el
Urb
anso
cial
mo
vem
ents
Su
bu
rban
isat
ion
and
ho
meo
wn
ersh
ipca
use
inn
er-c
ity
dis
inv
estm
ent
and
wo
rsen
the
liv
ing
and
ho
usi
ng
con
dit
ion
s
So
cial
urb
anre
new
al†
So
cial
mix
isto
incr
ease
inv
estm
ent
inb
uil
ten
vir
on
men
tS
oci
alre
nta
lh
ou
sin
gsu
pp
ort
sso
cial
mix
by
pre
ven
tin
gd
isp
lace
men
t
†C
han
ge
of
scal
e:fr
om
reg
ion
alto
nei
gh
bo
urh
oo
d†
Ch
ang
eo
fp
rob
lem
:fr
om
sub
sid
is-
ing
of
sub
urb
anh
om
eow
ner
ship
tou
rban
po
or
wh
oca
nn
ot
affo
rdto
inv
est
them
selv
esV
laam
sB
lok
elec
to-
rate
Cu
ltu
ral
dif
fere
nce
so
fim
mig
ran
tg
rou
ps
are
un
wel
com
ein
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mis
hso
ciet
y
RC
M†
Eth
nic
mix
wil
lim
pro
ve
inte
gra
tio
nS
oci
alre
nta
lh
ou
sin
gsu
pp
ort
sso
cial
mix
by
chan
nel
lin
gim
mig
ran
tsaw
ayfr
om
pri
vat
ere
nta
lh
ou
sin
g†
Ch
ang
eo
fsc
ale:
nat
ion
alto
nei
gh
-b
ou
rho
od
†C
han
ge
of
pro
ble
m:
fro
mn
on
-as
sim
ilat
ing
imm
igra
nts
too
pp
ort
u-
nit
y-p
oo
rn
eig
hb
ou
rho
od
Urb
anm
un
icip
alg
ov
ern
men
ts
Su
bu
rban
isat
ion
un
der
min
esce
ntr
alci
ty’s
tax
bas
esS
IF†
So
cial
mix
wil
lim
pro
ve
soci
alan
dec
on
om
icin
teg
rati
on
So
cial
ren
tal
ho
usi
ng
esta
tes
suff
erfr
om
lack
of
soci
alm
ix(c
ult
ura
ld
iffe
ren
ces
and
fin
anci
alre
ven
ues
)†
Ch
ang
eo
fsc
ale:
reg
ion
alto
nei
gh
-b
ou
rho
od
Cit
yF
un
d†
So
cial
mix
wil
lim
pro
ve
tax
bas
ean
dcr
eate
‘liv
ely
city
’S
oci
alre
nta
lh
ou
sin
gth
reat
ens
soci
alm
ixat
city
lev
el†
Ch
ang
eo
fsc
ale:
fro
mre
gio
nto
city
†C
han
ge
of
vic
tim
:fr
om
po
or
resi
den
tto
city
go
ver
nm
ent
†C
han
ge
of
pro
ble
m:
fro
msu
bu
rba-
nis
atio
nto
po
or
resi
den
t
186 M. P. J. Loopmans et al.
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and its effects on the urban region in research notes and reports (Schelde-Dijle vzw, 1971).
However, urban planners were relatively powerless and were only gradually granted
access to state organisations. It was only after contestation grew stronger that urban
planners were incorporated into the state structure, first at the local level (in new and
relatively marginal planning departments, for example, see Loopmans, 2008 on Antwerp),
and later at the regional level.
When groups contesting mass suburbanisation and related inner-city problems were
incorporated in municipal and regional planning circles, the tone of the debate altered.
At this stage the concept of social mix entered the debate, concealing parts of the claims
made by contesting actors. It was first mentioned in three policy notes written by the first
Flemish Secretary of State for Spatial Planning (1973–1977), the Christian democrat
Luc Dhoore. In a critical review, Knops (1979), an early urban activist, described how
Dhoore reduced the original concerns over suburbanisation and urban decay to a problem
of physical deterioration of the built environment coinciding with a marginalising inner-
city population. Social mix was introduced as a solution: the call to renew the built
environment was translated to a need to renew the population. To improve inner urban
social mix, Dhoore suggested attracting higher-income groups (van den Broeck &
Baelus, 1992).
Dhoore’s notes were important as they were among the first reactions by the regional
state to the challenge posed by the anti-suburbanisation movements. They immediately
revealed a crucial strategy in establishing passive revolution: by reducing the regional
question of suburbanisation to an inner-city problem, the notes discursively concealed an
important part of the counter-movements’ claims and separated inner-city urban
movements from peripheral environmentalists. In this way they undermined the fragile
unity among the various protesting fractions. Moreover they limited the debate to a matter
of physical deterioration of the built environment, ignoring the mobility issue, the problem
of functional mix and the neglect of poor residents’ housing needs. At the same time, the
notes selected a particular part of the population (the inner-city poor) to be held responsible
for the deterioration of the built environment, driving a wedge between those arguing for a
more just housing policy and those striving for the improvement of the built environment.
In 1980, a campaign for social urban renewal was initiated by the European Council to
stimulate awareness of inner-city problems. A small ‘steering group’ of engaged
academics and bureaucrats (headed by Knops) were appointed to develop the social
renewal campaign in Flanders and subsequently delivered the first detailed working papers
on the future of Flemish cities. These working papers are interesting as they reveal the
difficulties faced by the counter-hegemonic movement to maintain a degree of unity
vis-a-vis the diversity of claims and concerns, once parts of the movement became
incorporated in official policy circles.
Embracing the policy focus on the inner city introduced by Dhoore, the working papers
depicted urban residents as the prime victims of suburbanisation and their interests as their
prime concern:
the population and the policy makers have to be convinced, first, that it is necessary
to stop suburbanisation and to give priority to the liveability of existing cores, and
second, that it is necessary to put the problems and interests of the residents first.
(van den Broeck & Baelus, 1992, p. 55)
Social Mix and Passive Revolution 187
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Echoing Dhoore, the steering group’s reports regarded neighbourhood segregation as a
major problem. However, the working papers continued to emphasise the relation between
segregation, decay, real-estate investment cycles and socio-cultural tendencies, reinforced
by politics:
In looking back at the urbanisation process, one can see that those that could afford
it, moved to the fringes of the city. . . . Government, planners, developers followed
this development and reinforced it through policies. We built and planned urban
decay. (Secretariaat Stadsvernieuwingscampagne, 1982, p. 7)
However, in its policy suggestions the steering group concentrated on segregation and
social mix and revealed a similar reductionist reasoning as Dhoore’s. First, the scale of the
problem was reduced: instead of tackling the ‘regional’ problem of suburbanisation
head-on, the policy scaled down the problem to one of deficient ‘local’ ‘inner-city
communities’. The steering group emphasised the need for ‘the creation of balanced
communities, based on social justice’ (Secretariaat Stadsvernieuwingscampagne, 1981,
pp. 9–10).
Balanced communities are not only a model for societal solidarity: the aim is first, as
with Dhoore, to counter inner-city decay. Hence the discourse again transformed the
problem. Instead of blaming suburbanisation, the remaining inner-city population was
related to urban decay:
The financially well off can afford a villa. Workers and middle classes go to social
housing located at the city fringes. The remaining urban population consist,
consequently, of marginal and poor people: elderly, singles, young families with
small children and particularly migrants. . . . With limited finances and, for some, no
intention to stay in the city, these groups don’t renovate their dwellings.
Deterioration of the dwelling and the surroundings follow. Leading, finally, to the
decay of the city (Secretariaat Stadsvernieuwingscampagne, 1981, p. 19).
The steering group linked urban liveability with population diversity and hence social mix
became a prime goal of the social renewal campaign. ‘If the balance cannot be restored,
this can be fatal for the survival of the city’ (Secretariaat Stadsvernieuwingscampagne,
1981, p. 19).
The campaign awakened government interest in urban renewal and in 1982, the new
Christian Democrat Minister, Paul Akkermans, installed a regional urban renewal policy.
Akkermans strengthened the legitimation of the governmental focus on inner-city renewal
by discursively linking the interests of marginal inner-city populations (who had been
transformed into the problems of urban decay in earlier documents) with the goal of
attracting better-off residents. For Akkermans, the housing circumstances and
participation of the most vulnerable groups in the city were key concerns and social
mixing was one of the instruments used to achieve better living conditions. The ‘attraction
of newcomers must focus on a demographic rejuvenation and revival of neighbourhoods,
for the benefit of those who already live in the neighbourhood’ (Akkermans, 1983, p. 57).
188 M. P. J. Loopmans et al.
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The renewal process must result in: better dwellings, more pleasant surroundings,
and . . . a socially mixed population. A mix of diverse social classes is favourable
above homogeneous populations. (Akkermans, 1983, p 75)
As social mix had to be achieved for the good of the resident population, displacement was
to be avoided.
We need to attract new inhabitants to poor neighbourhoods . . . . Newcomers can lead
to a more diverse population, which will contribute to better and more diverse
services in the neighbourhood. One thing should be prevented: that newcomers
displace the present tenants. (Akkermans, 1983, pp. 74–75
To prevent displacement social housing had to be provided for those who could not afford
to buy their own residence.
Akkermans’ social renewal policy was powerful in curbing counter-hegemonic
contention because it channelled the energy of both elites and rank-and-file parts of the
movement towards collaboration with the regional and local state. The development of
policies provided answers to some of the movements’ claims while discursively
concealing others. Deploying the concept of social mix, the discourse the urban question
was changed considerably in the course of policy development. The issue was scaled down
(from a regional problem to a local or neighbourhood problem) and reduced in content
(largely limited to an issue of physical decay of the built environment), while the problem
was also changed: by emphasising the need of a social mix, the problem was no longer
middle-class suburbanisation, but the concentration of elderly and low-income groups
(and in some cases, also ethnic minorities) incapable of investing in the amelioration of
their living conditions.
However, the social urban renewal policy did little to alter the core of Flemish
anti-urbanism. Compared to the ongoing De Taeye-subsidies, the social renewal campaign
struggled with tight budgets. Consequently, the objective of improving the urban living
environment and social mix was barely met. Rather, on the contrary, the policy further
stimulated planning blight by quickly designating areas for redevelopment while turning to
action belatedly with limited budgets (De Decker, 1987). When housing was finally
constructed, social mix was not even achieved; in the context of continued suburbanisation,
the renewal campaign did not succeed in stimulating homeowners to renovate and nearly
all renovation was done by social housing companies for lower-income residents.
Addressing the Immigrant Question through Neighbourhood Ethnic Mix
Compared to the early industrialised Wallonia, Flanders was rather late in experiencing
mass immigration. With the exception of the mining basin in Central Limburg, immigrants
arrived in Flemish cities only in the second half of the 1960s, filling in the gaps in the
urban labour and housing markets left by Fordist economic growth and suburbanisation
(Kesteloot, 2006). The number of immigrants remained insignificant until the crisis years
of the 1970s and 1980s when mass lay-offs in the Limburg and Walloon mining area
shifted the focus of migration to Flemish cities. Immigrants, mainly of Moroccan and
Turkish descent, concentrated in the 19th century inner-city districts dominated by private
rental housing. From the 1990s onwards, while immigration from Turkey and Morocco
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remained important, an influx from Eastern European, Sub-Saharan African and Asian
countries added to the ethnic diversity in these areas.
The issue of ethnic mix was only rarely mentioned in the 1970s and early 1980s, but this
was to change dramatically after that time. By the late 1980s, the extreme right party
Vlaams Blok introduced a virulent anti-immigrant discourse to electoral campaigns.
While the Vlaams Blok’s anti-immigrant mobilisation did not react against the hegemonic
urbanisation model as such, it did connect its anti-immigrant stance to wider discontent
about everyday life in derelict inner-city neighbourhoods where immigrants tended to
concentrate. From 1987 onwards, the Vlaams Blok made a combination of immigrants,
crime and inner-city degeneration its prime campaigning theme (De Maesschalck &
Loopmans, 2003). Gaining strength with each election, the Vlaams Blok turned the
‘immigrant question’ into a major urban problem, thereby indirectly challenging the
dominant mode of urban development that had resulted in inner-city immigrant
concentration. Faced with such a potentially disruptive mobilisation and electoral threat,
government parties felt forced to react (Loopmans et al., 2002; De Decker et al., 2005).
First, the federal government installed a Royal Commissioner to investigate the immigrant
question. The Commissioner reinforced the discursive link between social mix, urban
development and the immigrant question, thereby concealing parts of the claims made by
Vlaams Blok. Flemish political reports further twisted the Vlaams Blok discourse into a
matter of concentrated urban poverty. Subsequently, the Flemish Government initiated a
number of policies that tried to improve the lives of the urban poor (native or immigrant)
while also decreasing immigrant concentration. Flemish policy discourse and practice
introduced social mix as a way to partly address the concerns of Vlaams Blok voters.
Meanwhile, discontent over cultural disintegration was ignored and the economic
emancipation of immigrants was stimulated.
The first time the Vlaams Blok made substantial gains in (local) elections was 9 October
1988. In Antwerp the party gained 17 per cent of the votes and 5 per cent in Ghent. In its
campaign, the party emphasised an anti-immigrant stance linking minorities with crime
and urban decay. It explained the ‘immigrant problem’ as ‘uprootedness’ and redundancy;
there was no work for them anymore. Vlaams Blok called for closed borders and the
deportation of non-nationals from Belgian territory. The Federal Government appointed
former Christian Democrat Minister Paula D’Hondt as Royal Commissioner on Migration
(hereafter RCM) with the task of analysing causes and proposing measures to deal with the
problems of migration. In her report, she concealed parts of the Vlaams Blok claims by
downscaling and transforming the ‘immigrant question’ from what Vlaams Blok had
called ‘failed assimilation into national culture’ to a problem of deprivation in particular
urban neighbourhoods. She emphasised the lack of opportunities for young urbanites of
immigrant descent: ‘The problems of social cohesion are caused by social exclusion, in
particular of youngsters, in urban contexts’ (RCM, 1993, pp. 11–12).
Focusing on the issue of young people in deprived neighbourhoods, RCM formulated
proposals to stimulate coexistence of natives and aliens, focusing on education, work and
housing. RCM criticised the unfairness of housing policies for the middle classes which
forced immigrant households into low quality housing concentrated in rundown
neighbourhoods. She claimed that the concentration of immigrants harmed their
integration into mainstream society. She emphasised how their concentration resulted
from housing market forces and racial discrimination. Hence, social housing was
presented as a strategic but underused instrument to achieve social mix. RCM described
190 M. P. J. Loopmans et al.
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how immigrants’ inability to enter social housing reinforced concentration in areas
dominated by a residual private rental market. She criticised housing companies for
purposively deploying subtle exclusion mechanisms to keep out immigrant families, even
though since 1973 nationality no longer figured among the legally defined eligibility
criteria; she pleaded for stricter controls on allocation procedures and argued that the
proportion of immigrant households in social housing estates should be comparable to the
city average (D’Hondt, 1989, p. 25). At the Flemish level, the Vlaams Blok claims were
further distorted. Analysts of the Flemish Socialist Party depicted the Vlaams Blok success
as the revenge of the urban poor in particular (Huyse, 1992). Vlaams Blok was popular, not
because it denounced immigrants’ lagging cultural integration, but because of urban
decay, social deprivation and lack of adequate housing for the urban poor in general; the
urban poor (native and immigrant) had been neglected for too long, and they took revenge
by supporting an ‘anti-establishment party’.
Inspired by both analyses, a number of hasty policy measures intended to soothe the
rediscovered ‘urban poor’ were installed at the Flemish level (Loopmans et al., 2002).
First, in 1990, Flemish Government started a fund for ‘the integration of the under-
privileged’ (Vlaams Fonds voor de Integratie van Kansarmen or VFIK), which channelled
extra means for social measures to cities with a concentration of deprived and immigrant
households.
Second, after a long period of neglect, the Flemish Government re-engaged with social
housing to ‘improve inner city social mix’ in the way it was envisaged by the RCM.
Immigrant access to social housing was improved as eligibility criteria and allocation
procedures were clarified and more strictly enforced. Low-income households were given
priority, irrespective of nationality or descent. An emergency programme of social
housing construction (Domus Flandria) was developed to catch up with demand after a
decade of near zero production and reduce immigrant concentrations in neighbourhoods
with a large private rental stock.
The social housing measures attempted to undermine the mobilisation potential of the
Vlaams Blok challenger by partially addressing the claims of its electorate. First,
immigrants were allowed improved access to the social housing stock, which it was
expected would dilute existing concentrations and make the presence of ethnic minorities
less visible. Second, by re-engaging with social housing production, the government
hoped to regain legitimacy with the urban poor in a somewhat clientelistic manner.
However, the more general issue of cultural integration, as raised by the Vlaams Blok, was
left unanswered.
Income Mix and the Local Tax Problem
A third source of discontent with the hegemonic mode of urban development appeared
somewhat unexpectedly from within the state itself: central city governments. In the wake
of the social renewal policy, the city of Antwerp commissioned a study on the fiscal
consequences of suburbanisation (De Brabander et al., 1992), which would become
influential in the 1990s. This study revealed how, in Antwerp, selective suburbanisation of
better off residents undermined the inner-city’s tax base (48 per cent of municipal revenue
in Flanders is derived from local taxes, Loopmans et al., 2007) and added a new, powerful
contestant of the hegemonic model in addition to the previous two. The study concluded
with a series of demands from the city government: selective suburbanisation should
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be stemmed; a coherent development policy should be elaborated for the whole urban
region, and fiscal solidarity between the various municipalities of the urban region should
be improved (De Brabander et al., 1992, pp. 179–187). The Antwerp study was supported
by other Flemish cities like Ghent, and also by Brussels, and provoked some controversy
as its conclusions threatened the political status quo at the regional level. Moreover, it
posed an important challenge to the regional government, who had just shifted focus to the
urban poor. Instead of the urban poor, city governments positioned themselves as prime
victims of the hegemonic urbanisation approach in Flanders and called for attention at the
Flemish level.
In an attempt to reconcile the older discourses on inner-city decline and the immigrant
issue with the new fiscal question, a new approach to cities and urban policy emerged at
the regional level in 1995, with the advent of a new Flemish government. The aspiration
was that:
our cities must again be good and safe to live in. We need an integrated approach,
fitting smaller projects and actions in a coherent and global vision. The communities
themselves are best positioned to indicate where to take which measures, giving due
consideration to the needs of the very poor. (van den Brande et al., 1993, p. 4)
A Minister for Urban Policy (socialist Leo Peeters) was appointed. Peeters wrote an
elaborate policy note introducing two innovations to official discourse. First, Peeters
integrated the concerns of urban municipalities about their declining tax base into a
discourse on urban regeneration. The minister warned against socially selective
suburbanisation. This undermined the city’s tax base and contains the danger of social
closure:
the danger exists that suburban municipalities create their own safe havens of
affluence . . . . There are plenty of foreign examples of affluent neighbourhoods
protecting themselves with CCTV and private security. (p. 64)
He acknowledged the findings of the study by De Brabandere et al. (1992), but was rather
selective in adopting the solutions proposed. To turn the tide, the minister first saw
opportunities to exploit the attractions of urban life for the new class of young urban
professionals, thereby concealing some of the more radical demands for a city-region wide
government or improved fiscal solidarity:
For the [new] household types, highly educated and well earning, the [inner] city
provides better opportunities. Double income households have limited time budgets
and benefit from the proximity of facilities (shops, schools, work, culture).
The challenge is to create neighbourhoods that keep these people in the city in such
a way that also the poor and vulnerable people take advantage of it. (Peeters, 1995,
p. 64)
In linking the attraction of higher-income groups to the stimulation of social mix, this
reconciled the cities’ demands with the discontent of the urban population, in particular
those residents potentially voting for the Vlaams Blok. Indeed, social mix through the
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attraction of higher-income groups was also proposed as a solution for concentrated
deprivation. For Peeters, concentration exacerbated social deprivation:
The chance to become poor is higher if a child grows up in a deprived
neighbourhood. There is a poverty spiral: a limited interest for education and inferior
schools result in low educational outcomes. The final consequences are: irregular or
badly paid work, a low income and a rental house in a poor neighbourhood.
(Vandenberghe et al., 1997, p. 12)
The conclusion was that, because poverty and ethnic minority concentrations were bad for
lower-income residents, and because the attraction of higher-income groups might
improve ethnic and social mix in deprived neighbourhoods, such a policy was also good
for poor and immigrant inner-city households. Peeters transformed the VFIK into the
‘Social Impulse Fund’ (SIF). The SIF subsidised ‘specific actions of urban regeneration
and the improvement of the quality of life in deprived neighbourhoods’ (van den Brande
et al., 1993, p. 5).
‘Deprived neighbourhoods’ appeared as a pivotal concept. Such poverty concentrations
were to be combated by attracting better-off residents, thus improving the housing stock
and the living environment and welfare and employment measures simultaneously.
The SIF spoke a lot about attracting higher-income groups while improving the lives
of the urban poor. In practice, however, the SIF focused on improving the living conditions
of the urban poor. Much to the disapproval of central government, attracting middle classes
to the city remained a secondary preoccupation. This changed when a new (liberal-
dominated) government came to power in 1999. Sensitive to increased central city
pressure, the new policy declaration stated:
Such a policy should halt suburbanization in the first place. In the past decades, this
flight to the suburbs has resulted in middle and upper class families changing their
inner city residence for a house in the leafy fringe. This has resulted in smaller
families and more in general to the impoverishment of the city. Hence the fiscal
basis of the city, but also the social tissue and community life are weakened.
Simultaneously increased auto mobility undermines the ecological basis. Therefore,
cities need to be turned into attractive living environments for families again.
(Dewael et al., 1999, p. 91)
The new policy discourse turned the city itself into the prime victim of suburbanisation;
the concept of social mix, now deployed at the city instead of the neighbourhood level,
was used to conceal the interests of the urban population, and the urban poor in particular:
they were being subsumed under the ‘more general interest’ of the city itself. The city was
to be saved by improving the social mix through the attraction of the ‘more vital
population’ (Anciaux, 2000, p. 10).
The City Fund, the follow-up of the SIF since 2003 (Loopmans, 2007), was destined to
support city governments in the competition for middle-class residents with suburban
municipalities. Supporting measures to improve fiscal solidarity or a city-region wide
governance structure remained taboo. Facts on internal migration revealed how the
stimulation of gentrification remained futile in respect of continued selectivity
of suburbanisation. After a short period of slow-down in the 1990s, suburbanisation
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reinvigorated after 2000, stimulated by the continued practices of generous residential
zoning and subsidies and fiscal stimulation for homeownership (De Decker et al., 2009b;
Moortgat & Vandekerckhove, 2007).
Preaching the Passive Revolution through Social Mix: Consequences for the Social
Rental Housing Model
We have described above how the main historical ideological alternative to
suburbanisation, the socialist-supported idea of inner-city social rental housing, remained
underdeveloped in Flanders. With the arrival of relatively powerful counter-hegemonic
mobilisations against the suburbanisation model of urban development, it seemed to
regain momentum. In a reaction to these mobilisations, social mix was deployed in an
attempt to establish passive revolution, but equally paved the way for social rental housing
as a problem-solver. Social renewal policy needed social housing to prevent displacement
and realise social mix in a largely private housing market.
When the Vlaams Blok reduced the urban question to an immigrant question, once
again social housing was proposed as part of the strategy for passive revolution. Reducing
the Vlaams Blok discourse to an issue of ethnic (over)concentrations in 19th-century
private rental neighbourhoods, the RCM considered access to social housing for
immigrant groups (as an alternative for the private rental sector) as a prerequisite for
improving the ethnic mix in the city. Simultaneously, the Vlaams Blok mobilisation was
discursively transformed by Flemish state actors into a revenge of the urban poor. Again,
more social housing was supposed to respond partly to their claims and it was hoped it
would placate at least those who primarily complained about their own living conditions in
deprived urban neighbourhoods. Social housing seemed to have been acknowledged as a
necessary ingredient of passive revolution to save the hegemonic model of urbanisation in
Flanders from a frontal attack by a wide range of civil society movements.
However, in the course of the 1990s, the same social mix concept turned against social
housing. Stricter enforcement of eligibility rules allowed poor immigrant families access
to social rental housing and higher-income groups increasingly aspired to homeownership.
The average income in social housing declined sharply, bringing financial problems to
social housing companies. By the second half of the 1990s, they echoed the discourse
urban governments had initiated: they needed a better social mix to increase rental income;
social mix would save the companies. Their claims were echoed by the white-dominated
tenant organisations. Relating the rapid influx of poor and immigrant residents to livability
problems, they mobilised side-by-side with social housing companies to restrict access for
immigrants and poor people. The influx of those groups was now related to a loss of social
mix within the social housing estate. Geerts, Secretary of a syndicate of social housing
companies, explained that:
Antwerp social housing tenants are fed up with the poor, mostly foreign risk groups
who threaten the liveability of their dwellings. . . . Poor people have another culture,
which is hard for original inhabitants of social housing to live with. These
neighbourhoods no longer reflect the previous social mix of before. Income
eligibility rules have decreased, changing the social composition of estates.
(Geerts, 2001)
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Pressured by the electorate, local politicians joined the debate. In the build up to the 1998
local elections, Antwerp Christian Democrat Marc van Peel discussed social mix in social
housing estates under the heading ‘security, tolerance and justice’:
The presence of ethnic minorities is a richness, not a threat. Nevertheless we should,
by 2002, realise a ‘social mix’ in urban areas. The share of vulnerable people,
migrants and other socially weaker groups should not be higher than 20%. A higher
concentration of migrants and other vulnerable people can be a major source of
intolerance. We need a policy of dispersal and mix. (van Peel, 26 March 1998)
In response, Flemish social housing legislation underwent considerable change. First,
eligibility income levels rose with the hope that more prosperous households could be
attracted. Furthermore, access at the bottom was increasingly restricted. Asylum seekers
and undocumented migrants faced restrictions, while in 2005 attempts were made to make
access legally dependent upon following a Dutch language course.
Finally, the negative discourse on social mix in social housing estates puts the very
concept of social housing under strain. Large estates are increasingly considered a threat to
‘social mix’ in cities. Social housing is regarded as housing almost exclusively for poor
and minority residents. In the wider discourse on urbanisation, these groups are
increasingly considered a threat: they need to be dispersed or replaced by ‘more vital
groups’.
After Domus Flandria, the Flemish Government stopped the construction of large
estates. Instead, social housing was to become ‘invisible’: Minister Peeters presented
small-scale, mixed tenure estates as the future social housing model (see Peeters &
De Decker, 1997; Vervloesem et al., 2008). Later, Minister Anciaux repeated:
Previously too many large scale, unattractive social housing estates have been
developed without much consideration. We produced neighbourhoods, in particular
in cities, that were too one-dimensional, holding a population of largely vulnerable
residents. . . . This resulted in various problems of liveability (insecurity, vandalism,
social isolation etc.) and stigmatised the residents. The earlier policy change will be
continued and reinforced. (Anciaux, 2000, p. 3)
His successor Gabriels put it more bluntly:
In some dwellings, I wouldn’t even house my rabbits’ . . . I don’t want to renovate
these high-rises, because then I would preserve them, but they are a regular eyesore.
(Minister Gabriels in Dag Allemaal, 26 January 2002)
Conclusion
Gramscian theory offers a framework to understand the importance of policy discourse
and practices as a reaction to contentious movements and mobilisations. Gramsci
teaches us to understand such mobilisations as challenges to hegemony, threatening to
disrupt the coherence of a hegemonic world-view. Passive revolution can be understood
as an attempt to re-establish the coherence of the hegemonic project without radical
alteration. Policy discourses and practices are reformulated and changed, with three
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important effects: the incorporation of counter-hegemonic forces’ leaders and
movements; partial responses to counter-hegemonic claims; and finally, the partial
discursive concealment of movements’ claims. All three effects globally result in
the undermining of the constantly fragile unity of counter-hegemonic forces while
re-enforcing hegemonic coherence.
The analysis presented here clarifies how certain concepts or ideas can be particularly
instrumental for such an endeavour. Describing the history of the hegemonic project on
urban development and housing in Flanders (which focused on support for homeowners of
detached single-family houses in rural settings), this study reveals how social mix is a
crucial concept that is repeatedly used for a passive revolution.
Its inherent conceptual openness and flexibility are essential to understand its success.
Social mix can relate to various spatial scales (neighbourhood mix, city-scale mix etc.) and
various social groups (income mix, ethnic mix, class mix); it is rarely pinned down to one
concrete definition. This allows political elites to deploy various strategies of passive
revolution. ‘Movement claims’ are re-interpreted in such a way so that they no longer
threaten the hegemonic status quo by changing the cause, victim or the scale of the
problem. For example, during the 1990s when central city governments re-opened
the debate about selective suburbanisation at the level of the metropolitan area through the
argument of the local tax base, the City Fund redefined the problem as a matter of
unattractive inner-city neighbourhoods with a predominantly poor and immigrant
population. Therefore, central cities were stimulated to engage in a competitive struggle
for higher-income residents with suburban municipalities, instead of demanding fiscal
solidarity or the creation of city-regional government bodies that could stem further
construction on peripheral greenfield areas.
‘Partial solutions’ were presented as definitive answers by discursively changing the
victim, problem or the scale at which the problem is to be addressed, as with the Vlaams
Blok initiated debate on immigration. The Vlaams Blok introduced the immigrant
question as a matter of irreconcilable cultural differences and called for stricter national
immigration policies. Linking the immigrant question with the concept of social mix,
RCM scaled down the solution from national immigration policies to addressing ethnic
segregation in opportunity poor neighbourhoods to stimulate integration. Further bending
of the social mix concept by the Flemish Government shifted the problem from
immigrants who did not adapt to national culture to the opportunity poor neighbourhoods
where Vlaams Blok voters lived.
Finally, by changing the scale of the problem, it is concealed how ‘movement leaders’
were placed in positions where they did not harm hegemonic coherence. This became
apparent in the 1980s, where urban planners, critical of selective suburbanisation within
the urban region, were engaged in policy making to improve neighbourhood social mix
with little effect on the suburbanisation process.
Social mix appears as a red thread in urban policy making. However, social mix has
never been realised through policy measures, as the dominant housing and planning logic
remains supportive of socially selective suburbanisation. The concept even serves to
undermine the main ideological alternative to homeownership suburbanisation in
Flanders, namely the model of central social rental housing. To summarise, the use of
social mix has merely reinforced the hegemony of the suburbanisation-cum-homeowner-
ship model, not just because it served to undermine potentially counter-hegemonic
claims by new challengers, but also because it gradually disempowered the main
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counter-hegemonic model—social rental housing in urban settings (see also De Decker,
2005).
The paper reveals how attention to the political or legitimation dimension of policies
and policy discourses provides an alternative perspective to explain why some policy
concepts can be so omni-present in policy discourses yet so ineffective in practice.
From a neo-Gramscian perspective, concepts such as social mix are revealed to serve
very different purposes than social engineering or governing the conduct of individuals.
The success of social mix for passive revolution in Flanders, and the pervasiveness
of complaints in other policy contexts about the ineffectiveness of social mixing
policies in pursuing its stated goals, suggest that it might be fruitful to expand this
neo-Gramscian look to social mix (or other similarly popular policy concepts) in other
countries.
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