Search

The Ten-Year Plan for the port of Antwerp (1956-1965) funded the expansion of the port's infrastructure over a 10-year period. Strictly, a national government-funded infrastructure programme for the construction of a set of canal docks, the programme laid the basis for a broader urbanization of the north-eastern Antwerp metropolitan region. The importance of the operation lies primarily in its role as an instrument of urbanization rather than in the improvement of the transport and transshipment capacity of the port because it opened up a large territory to industrial settlement. The linear layout of the project along the Scheldt River led planners to conceive the further urbanization of the adjacent region on a linear city model, with satellite communities attached to the industrial and infrastructural strip. Compared with the contemporary Europoort plan for the port of Rotterdam, where several planning agencies implemented conflicting plans for functionally distinct infrastructures and the construction of a new town, the success of the Antwerp approach resides in the flexible and strategic implementation of the project as a co-production between various authorities and private parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]