Urban Regimes and Strategies : Building Europe's Central Executive District in Brussels

If a city based its planning decisions on the needs of an international bureaucracy rather than on the traditional needs of local residents and businesses, how would that city change? How might it look? In Brussels, Belgium - home to the European Union since 1957 - such change is taking place. Observing the change, Alexis G. Papadopoulos explores a new geographical concept, the Central Executive District. This urban form is significantly different from the Central Business District, its conventional counterpart. Drawing on game and rational choice theories, spatial analysis and land economics, the author analyzes how the landscape of the city's centre has evolved over the last three decades under the influence of successive coalitions of local and foreign elites. He describes how foreign diplomats, international corporate executives and real-estate developers co-operate with one another to carry out major urban projects in the face of resistance from local neighbourhood groups, conservationists and political factions. This study explores the future of world cities like New York, London and Paris and applies the notion of co-operative regimes.