Pre-1950s: historical precedents and genesis in Brussels, The 1950s were not the first time that Brussels had been radically altered by major redevelopment. Two prior sweeping changes to the city's urban fabric were the straight-lined
central boulevards modeled after
Paris, which were created following the
covering and diverting of the river Senne (1867–1871), as well as the
North–South railway connection, which took around forty years to finish (1911–1952), and which had left swaths of the
city center filled with debris and craters for decades. Another precedent was the construction of the
Palace of Justice, the largest building erected in the 19th century (1866–1883), for which a section of the
Marolles/Marollen neighborhood was demolished. The writer
André de Vries asserts that the penchant for heavy-handedness can be traced back to the reign of King
Leopold II in the late 19th century, and possibly even all the way back to the
bombardment of the city by
Louis XIV's troops in 1695. "There is barely one building still standing", he says, "from before 1695, with the exception of some churches and the
Town Hall". Leopold II sought to give Brussels the image of a grand capital city of an
imperial/colonial power. By the middle 20th century, there was a tacit alliance between urban development entrepreneurs and local government, with a modernist agenda and with their sights set firmly on large-scale development projects. The citizens of Brussels were largely left out of the process.
From the 1950s to the 1980s: culmination and opposition in Brussels, as seen from the /, near
Brussels-South railway station, in 1980 The original Brusselization was the type of urban regeneration performed by Brussels in connection with the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (
Expo 58). In order to prepare the city for Expo 58, buildings were torn down without regard either to their architectural or historical importance, high-capacity square office or apartment buildings were built, boulevards were created and tunnels dug. Among the most controversial was the large-scale demolition of
townhouses for development of the high-rise
business district in the
Northern Quarter. The car-centric approach also led to the construction of parking lots, as in the /, where the Central Halls of 1874 were razed to make way for Parking 58. All of these changes were designed to quickly increase the number of people working and living in the city and improve transportation. Further radical changes resulted from Brussels's role as the center of the
European Union (EU) and
NATO, beginning with the construction of the
European Commission's headquarters in 1959. Entire blocks of residential buildings were acquired and
left to decay until the last residents fled and
building permits were finally granted out of sheer exhaustion. This method of neglect was then generalized to the entire city, where the amount of office space quintupled in about twenty years: from in 1949 to in the early 1970s. The introduction of a high-speed rail network in the 1990s was the latest excuse to speculate on multiple rows of properties for modern office or hotel redevelopment, which led to the razing of neighborhood blocks near
Brussels-South railway station. These changes caused outcry amongst the citizens of Brussels and by
environmentalist and
preservationist organizations. The demolition of
Victor Horta's
Art Nouveau Maison du Peuple/Volkshuis in 1965 was one focus of such protests, as was the construction of the IBM Tower in 1978. Many architects also protested, and it was the architectural world that coined the name
Brusselization for what was happening to Brussels. Architects such as
Léon Krier and
Maurice Culot formulated an
anti-capitalist urban planning theory, as a rejection of the rampant modernism that they saw overtaking Brussels.
Since the 1990s: from Brusselization to façadism , situated in the partially demolished and renovated
Résidence Palace, is an example of contemporary Brusselization. In the early 1990s, laws were introduced in Brussels restricting the demolition of buildings that were deemed to have architectural or historical significance, and in 1999, the city authorities' urban development plan explicitly declared high-rise buildings to be architecturally incompatible with the existing aesthetics of the city center. This led to the rise of what was termed
façadisme, i.e. the destruction of the whole interior of a historic building while preserving its historic
façade, with new buildings erected behind or around it. These laws were the Town Planning Act 1991, which gave local authorities the powers to refuse demolition requests on the grounds of historical, aesthetic, or cultural significance, and to designate architectural heritage zones; and the Heritage Conservation Act of 1993, which gave the government of the Brussels-Capital Region the power to designate buildings to be protected for historic reasons. However, this system had its deficiencies. Whilst the Capital Region's government could designate historic buildings, it was the
nineteen municipal authorities within it that were responsible for demolition permits. Not until the introduction of a '''' system was this internecine conflict resolved. ==Global perspectives==