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From Ecology to Urbanism: Urban Metabolism Genealogies and Perspectives in Urbanism Theory and Practice

par Bortolotti, Andrea ;Grulois, Geoffrey ;Ranzato, Marco
Référence Designing Territorial Metabolism, Metropolitan Studio on Brussels, Barcelona, and Veneto, Jovis, Berlin, Ed. 1, page (55-70)
Publication Publié, 2018

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Résumé :

As early as the ‘70s of the last century, the Belgian ecologist Paul Duvigneaud studied Brussels as an ecosystem. His original work combined ecosystem ecology with regionalist and urban planning tradition and it is considered one of the first metabolism studies of real cities. Afterwards, more specialised studies on urban metabolism, both in Brussels and abroad, flowed into industrial ecology, which focuses on the urban energyand material flows, narrowing the interest on the urban space and environment. Driven by the debate on sustainability, more recently, there has been a revival of the concept of urban metabolism in both urbanism theory and practice in Brussels. Nevertheless, it remains to better understand how and to which extent the discipline of urbanism can actually draw from and bring to ecology and urban metabolism studies.This essay/article, firstly, explores the origin, contribution, and legacy of the urban ecosystem and urban metabolism studies by Duvigneaud and the Brussels School. Secondly, it recalls the current resurgence of the concept in recent urbanism debate and highlights some current outstanding issues in Brussels. Finally, it proposes a comparison with the research in North America academic context, in particular around the ‘landscape urbanism’ discourse. Results show that, if the latter seems building on the original contribution of ‘ecology’ to urbanism – namely, the overcoming of traditional dichotomy between urban and rural, city and landscape, etc. – current urban metabolism applications in Brussels, focusing largely on urban flows and impacts, fall short in providing conceptual leap forward the understanding of their spatial organization andecology, and thus overlook the heritage of Duvigneaud and the Brussels School.