WHEN ARCHETYPES GENERATE UNCERTAINTY The case of the scattered metropolis

In the Low Countries, most of cities have been established during the Middle Ages, while the density of their location at large scale is identifiable since at least the early Renaissance – notably on the maps of the Dutch cartographer Jacob van Deventer. During the modern period, some concepts have locally influenced the configuration of Belgian urban cores – for example, the Leopoldian Park System and the Garden City movement in Brussels, or the modernist proposals for the Borgerweertpolder in Antwerp. However, few of them explain the evolution of Belgium after World War II, most specifically the spread of urbanization that gave rise to a large‐scale urban configuration formed by major Belgian networks and centred on Brussels. It’s thus the land administration process in itself that should be investigated, rather than the influence of any theoretical figure or archetype. By focusing on open spaces and infrastructures – first by commissioning railroads and waterways, after by creating a Road Fund (1955‐1964) and by promulgating strong planning laws (1948, 1959, 1962) –, the instituted actor‐network and its borders created indeed a ‘scattered metropolis’ despite the existence of a radio‐concentric land division system. If, at local scale, Belgian cities seem to refer to archetypal configurations, at large scale, they are therefore no longer singular, local territories but administered ones, at the bidding of administrative circumscriptions that do not correspond to their physical boundaries. In other words, they are united in being subject to the effects of the State and to its capacity to shape forms in situ. As a consequence, in the present case, there is no point in talking about ‘cities’ in meeting the theoretical and environmental challenges of the urbanization process. The difficult mixture of morphology, topography and politics it represents imposes an empirical approach of the articulations between ‘physical territories’ and ‘administered territories’. Such an approach aims to elucidate an ongoing anthropological contradiction of Modernity in a globalizing world: how to deal with spatial and conceptual processes of delineating in a context of struggle for legitimacy and resources