A new tower goes up in central Brussels in June 2024.
Photographer: Ksenia Kuleshova/BloombergDesign
As Brussels Booms, an Old Boogeyman Returns: Brusselization
Belgium’s capital became notorious for ugly high-rises and haphazard urban planning in the 1960s. But the city’s new wave of development could be different.
In a bid to tackle its housing crisis, Brussels is building upwards. Across the Belgian capital, new residential or mixed-use towers are springing up across the city.
These aren’t supertalls, but they’re significant by local standards, and they stand to reshape the skyline within a few years. For some, the wave of high-rises is also stirring unwelcome memories of a earlier era of urban development, and the pejorative term it inspired: Brusselization.