Taking Care of the Residual Fraction: The Provincial Projects for the Electrification of Belgium in a Perspective of Urbanisation

Abstract

This chapter deals with the emergence and development of the Belgian nebular city. It reveals a territorial strategy pursued by the Belgian nation-state which is primarily driven by the logics of industrialisation, thereby neglecting the effects and dynamics of urbanisation. In order to industrialise the Belgian territory inexpensively, Belgium devised a strategy of dispersal. In this way, the nation was able to circumvent the need to invest in urban arrangements. The history of the electricity service can be taken as an entry point to study the outcome of this policy. In the electricity service it is technically required to balance and coordinate production and consumption at all times. The electricity service therefore has to territorially embed this interdependence between processes of industrialisation and the rise of a modern lifestyle. This chapter discusses the policies developed to support the electrification of three of the Belgian provinces. While the establishing of such services of collective consumption are usually known as ‘urban questions’, these provincial initiatives show that the challenges posed by Belgium’s electrification did not only occur in the city, but also in the countryside. There it helped to produce specific dynamics of development. This openly illustrates the ambiguity of the Belgian policy of dispersal, which, despite its anti-urban motivations, in time has produced urban structures of accumulation. Nonetheless, these structures appear weak and inadequate. Inexpensive industrialisation has led to cheap urbanisation.