From Flux to Frame: Designing Infrastructure and Shaping Urbanization in Belgium

Daily traffic jams, discussions whenever a new infrastructure project is launched, the health debate about car emissions—the tense relationship between infrastructure and its surroundings becomes clearer to us every day. Infrastructure and urbanism seem to belong to two different worlds. While infrastructure design belongs to the domain of the engineer, urbanism is often part of the overlapping disciplines of architecture, social science, and policy studies. From Flux to Frame sets out to bridge the gap between urban planning and transport history. Maarten Van Acker investigates the spatial impact of highways, motorways, canals, tramways, and railways on the surrounding landscape by applying a new methodology that combines classical historical literature with innovative mapping techniques. The book features an abundance of previously unpublished historical illustrations of exceptional quality.