type
Linked initiative
Context
[ARCH (Action Research Collective for Hospitality) is not a mission of CityTools but a related initiative, founded by Mathieu Berger.]
ARCH (Action Research Collective for Hospitality) was created in January 2019 and was gradually formed by the voluntary commitment of a whole series of researchers (academics or not) and practitioners with diverse profiles (sociologists, architects, urban planners, artists, activists, anthropologists) in a collective action-research work aimed at promoting urban hospitality in Brussels, a metropolis crossed and marked by migratory movements. This collective was formed in the face of the observation of an absence of in-depth reflection on the social and humanitarian aspects of the North Quarter, which more generally testifies to a weak consideration of the social dimension of urban environments. The members of ARCH are convinced that urban hospitality to a plurality of city dwellers, and a fortiori to newcomers, is played out in particular in urban policies, which spatially organize the coexistence of different groups, thereby intervening in the processes of 'inclusion and exclusion towards them.
Purpose and approach
ARCH was formed with a triple objective. The first is to recall the permanence of certain urban issues such as the presence of newcomers in difficult situations, by going beyond the official conception of the "crisis" to integrate them as a permanent problem of the city to be addressed and on which investigate. The social questions which arise in the areas of urban public action in Brussels today seem to escape to a certain extent from the instruments and tools of knowledge mobilized in the implementation of regional urban policies; and call for other modes of investigation. The second is to investigate these questions while developing action research at the service of the stakeholders who are trying to answer them, faced with the deplorable reception conditions and the urgent needs - even institutionalized inhospitality. by the systems put in place at the federal level, competent in matters of asylum law. The third, of a political nature, is to contribute modestly, through research, to improving the qualities of hospitality in urban spaces, and more specifically in the North Quarter, by calling on politicians on these issues. It is for this purpose that Whose Future Is Here? has been published. Searching For Hospitality In Brussels Northern Quarter, which takes up the elements of the survey conducted by the ARCH collective, while drawing up proposals and recommendations intended for the regional public stakeholders concerned.