Exploring Visions of a Just and Sustainable City: A Q-Survey of Brussels’ Stakeholders

In recent years, the concept of ‘just transition’ has evolved from a narrow social project, aimed at protecting workers in industries affected by environmental regulations, to a comprehensive social-ecological project aimed at addressing social inequalities and environmental degradation in an integrated way. This integrated pursuit of social justice and environmental sustainability objectives is particularly relevant for the urban context, where social and ecological issues concentrate and intertwine. Despite the growing prominence of just transition imperatives in urban agendas, questions of what a just and sustainable city could and should look like remain under-investigated. Against that background, the main objective of the present research is to explore urban visions that explicitly combine social justice and environmental sustainability objectives. More specifically, this research aims at 1) outlining contrasting visions of a just and sustainable city in the Brussels Capital Region, 2) identifying the actors who support these visions, and 3) highlighting the areas of consensus and debate on the issue. With that aim in mind, we conducted a survey of Brussels’ stakeholders based on a Q-methodology, i.e. a statistically supported survey method for understanding the plurality of perspectives on a topic within a group. This survey was carried out between December 2023 and January 2024, and 32 representatives of administrations and other public institutions, NGOs and associations, business federations, trade unions and citizen movements took part. The statistical analysis of survey data and the interpretation of its results led to the definition of three contrasted urban visions bridging social justice and environmental sustainability objectives: The ‘Smart City’, the ‘Foundational City’ and the ‘Exnovation City’. The main distinguishing characteristics of these visions of the just and sustainable city reflecting the different perspectives of Brussels' stakeholders are presented in the summary figure. By identifying and exploring three original visions of Brussels bridging social justice and environmental sustainability objectives, this research contributes to understanding the contours of the future(s) towards which just urban transitions could orient, alongside the main disagreements and consensus on this issue. It thus provides fruitful ground for open debate and further research on just transitions in Brussels-Capital Region and other metropolitan areas.