layered city

The City of Blankenberge (Belgium) wants to further develop into a fully-fledged contemporary urban center and needed a new policy framework to increase the urban quality on its territory. We first supported the city council in formulating a concrete vision for the various subzones of the territory. We emphasized multiple city identities, diverse living, working and recreational environments, high-quality public space, safeguarding open space and strengthening green-blue networks. We translated these themes into map layers with which we helped substantiate morphological sub-areas and strategic zones within the territory. To make the desired urban quality more concrete, we selected different tactics per zone that can be applied in private and public (re)development projects. Finally, design exercises were made for different city districts (including the seafront or ‘Zeedijk’ area) as examples of strategic projects with good visual references for local identity. The combination of strategic zones and urban quality principles offers a flexible policy framework that can evolve with project experience gained in the territory.