“Intensify Industry by Double”: How Environmental Policy can Foster Economic Densification

The EU’s goal to achieve “No Net Land Take” requires substantial reductions in land conversion by 2030. It also means that, from 2050 onwards, the total area covered by “buildings and infrastructure” cannot increase unless it is compensated for elsewhere. This, among other implications, forces a reconsideration of how a growing economy can be accommodated within finite spatial limits. In this paper, we explore two projects that aim to revive and intensify existing industrial areas taking into account the fact that the redevelopment should be economically viable. In 2017 the Sheffield School of Architecture was invited by Atelier Brussels to examine how industrial land in the metropolitan South-West could be used more efficiently. The project responded to a wider policy ambition: reconciling urban growth with the preservation of space for manufacturing, making economic activity visible in the public space, and supporting emerging circular-economy dynamics. Through an in-depth design investigation of five contrasting industrial sites – Bollinckx, Bempt, Paul Gilsonlaan, the Audi expansion zone, and Allnex – the team developed a systematic and transferable approach to unlocking latent capacity within existing economic estates. Their method demonstrates how build-up, build-out, and infill strategies, combined with shared-space configurations, multi-storey industrial typologies, and the reuse of irregular or underutilised spaces, can collectively double usable economic floor area without increasing land take. Applied across the cases, this method yielded more than a 200% rise in usable floor area, demonstrating the broader potential of spatial intensification within highly constrained urban-industrial environments. Recently we applied a similar approach to an old industrial area to the east of Brussels. The site is partially situated in a flood prone area and is waiting for redevelopment. The method developed by SSoA was used to construct a real estate calculation model to estimate the potential return on investment. The case study consists currently of a small scale logistics sheds, between a small river and the Brussels’ orbital ring road. Due to the potential flooding problems the river needs more space for water management, leaving less space for the logistics activities. The model starts from the shrinking footprint of the buildings, and aims to optimize the redevelopment by adding multiple storeys. In this case the logistic activities were organized on the ground floor, with other economic activities, parking and long term private storage on the upper floor. To get to a viable project, the floor surface was tripled.