Michaël Bianchi

Charleroi, investigation of a post-industrial city in the making

Charleroi is a Belgian city, located in the Hainaut region. Its identity is associated with the extraction of coal, hence the name "black country" historically used to describe the city or its territory. The city developed strongly during the industrial era, until the end of the 60's. During this period, its territory and its morphology were deeply shaped by the industrial activity. This is illustrated by the presence of huge mountains of mining waste locally called "terrils", bordering the urban agglomeration and dominating all the surrounding landscape.

Like many mid-sized industrial cities in Europe, the city has undergone a major economic decline since the 1970s, resulting in an impoverishment of its population and a decline in its urban fabric. In 2007, under the impetus of the European (ERDF) and regional structural funds, the city authorities initiated a voluntarist project of urban transformation, through major interventions on the built environment, public spaces, and also logistical and cultural infrastructures. These mutations take place simultaneously with a redefinition of the economic structure of the city, through private and public initiatives. These initiatives are based on the conviction that the new levers for the redeployment of average Western cities reside in a technological economy with high added value, supported by the presence of social classes with a strong level of education. This vision supposes, among other things, that the urban fabric offers to these social categories a living environment adapted to their specific desires, so as to encourage their lasting implantation and their attachment to the city.

The thesis will focus, through a field investigation, to document these urban changes through their spatial outcomes, and their effects on the daily lives of the populations involved. It will also develop the ideological context that presides over these operations, in its explicit as well as implicit dimensions. Finally, it will study the effects of adhesion and rejection that this process provokes. All with the aim of clarifying its issues within the general framework of a space policy.