Urban questions in the countryside? Urbanization and the collective consumption of electricity in early twentieth-century Belgium

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper studies the early phases of the process of electrification in Belgium in order to shed light on the emergence of a distributed model of urbanization. The paper argues that the policies developed to extent the supply of electricity to each and every corner of the national territory is part and parcel of a distributed urbanism which reproduced itself in different forms throughout the twentieth century. Detailed analysis of the policies developed by three Belgian provinces to support the electrification in the interbellum period brings into view the ambiguity of the Belgian policy of dispersion. On the one hand, this analysis shows an eagerness to advance industrial production over the entire territory by making use of existing, rural collective resources. On the other hand, the policies of dispersion, despite their anti-urban motivations, in time produced (a need for) collective structures that facilitate processes of accumulation and differentiation that over time may be characterized as urban.