Brussels, Porte de Hal

I believe that this scene is in or close to the historic center of Brussels. It is not, however, an urban square in the manner of those we have been examining. Rather, it is more in the form of a park.

What, then, is it that distinguished a park from a square? I believe that the most important distinction is the nature of the connectedness of the space to the rest of the city. Here, the space seems isolated and unrelated to the city. In most of the other scenes in this chapter, the space is tightly integrated with the surroundings.

It becomes more and more difficult to achieve integration as the space becomes larger. The only way this space could be integrated would be to chop down all the trees and construct buildings at the edges of a sufficiently large scale. Only then would this area work as a square. In fact, that was probably never the intention - this is and was always intended to be an urban park.

 

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