Framing daily life in sprawl: Flanders urbanized space from a cinematic perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the possible contribution of cinematic perceptions for spatial planning in general and the inclusion of everyday experience in the planning of the Flemish urbanized landscape in particular. Urban planners as well as policy makers struggle to get grip on dispersed spatial developments, while everyday practice of consuming space in sprawly areas, also in Flanders, unimpededly continues. Our assumption is that based on a theoretical understanding of the duality between urban theories and everyday life, a cinematic approach might gain insights in the inhabitants’ imagination of suburbia in general and the Flemish landscape in particular. Here we will preliminarily refer to five contemporary fiction films, such as Nowhere Man (Patrice Toye, 2008), Fucking Suburbia (Jeff Otte, 2012), Kid (Fien Troch, 2012), Violet (Bas Devos, 2014) and Home (Fien Troch, 2016). They show how film represents, reflects and interacts with the intrinsic characteristics, the experience value and the typical dynamics of those sprawly areas. These perceptions might enhance a deeper understanding of the daily lives in those areas, and therewith enhance a more engaged approach of those areas by planners.

KEYWORDS:

• Film
• suburbia
• Flanders
• perception
• urbanization
• image

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their comments which contributed importantly to the content of this contribution.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Ruimtelijk Structuurplan Vlaanderen (RSV) 1997 : The Spatial Structure Plan for Flanders is a vision that indicates how we should use our space in Flanders and has been an important foundation of spatial policy since 1997. Beleidsplan Ruimte Vlaanderen (BRV) 2018 : the Flanders Regional Policy Plan (BRV) is a strategic vision that includes a picture of the future and an overview of long-term policy options, in particular strategic objectives. Ruimterapport (RURA) Vlaanderen 2018 : Spatial Report on Flanders that describes, analyses and evaluates the state of space/spatial fabric in Flanders.

2 The average population density in Flanders is 488 inhabitants/km² in 2021 (https://www.statistiekvlaanderen.be/bevolking-omvang-en-groei).

3 As one of the strategic goals of the Flemish policy plan on space, this building stop was announced in 2015 to end the additional consumption of land in 2040. Therefore, a gradual reduction is implemented in which the disappearance of 3 hectares of open space every day should be reached by 2025. This procrastination seems to have the opposite effect.

4 Many authors from different disciplines have investigated the influence of movies on attitudes and behaviour, for example, the ‘Payne Fund Studies’, a series of monographs already published in 1933 by a number of sociologists and psychologists or, more recently (Pautz 2015, etc.).

5 Postwar suburbia has been the setting for numerous suburban films since the 1940s, such as It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946), The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967), The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968), The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes, 1975), Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986), Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990), etc.

6 As a professional tool, the computer software ELAN allows to manually and semi-automatically annotate and transcribe audio or video recordings. For more additional information on the software see https://archive.mpi.nl/tla/elan. For this research, version 5.9 was used to segment the films in tiers according to thematic subjects and add descriptions.

7 From 2018 to 2021, the international project Cinema Rural mapped out various collections of films made by government institutions and agricultural organisations to communicate with the rural population. https://cagnet.be/page/project-cinema-rural.