Name: Jean-Marie Halleux

Position & Institute: Professor at the University of Liège, where he teaches economic geography and spatial planning

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I am an economic geographer by training, and my research focuses on how economic mechanisms impact the evolution of urban areas. For example, my PhD research was dedicated to how the functioning of land markets impacts urban expansion – and urban sprawl in particular – in Belgium.

I attach great importance to planning education, which explains my long-standing involvement in APERAU. In most contexts, I believe that planning education needs to be strengthened if we are to improve the effectiveness of spatial planning systems. With this objective in mind, I contributed to the creation of two degree programmes at my university: a general Master’s programme in spatial planning, whose primary objective is to train more qualified planners at the regional level, and a European Master’s programme on the transformation of post-industrial cities such as Liège (Erasmus Mundus Joint Master – Redesigning the Post-Industrial City (MSc RePIC)).

What are you passionate about?

My first passion is urban geography. I have always been interested in how cities are organised. To explain this interest, I would point to the influence of the places where I spent most of my youth, namely Liège and its industrial suburbs, which are still marked – although less and less so – by the spectacular infrastructure associated with the steel industry.

This passion for cities naturally led me to the idea that it is possible to shape their evolution, hopefully in the service of the common good. Isn’t that what urban planning is all about? It was with this perspective that I decided to study economic geography and subsequently developed my academic career.

What I am particularly passionate about is international comparative research. For example, comparing spatial planning systems allows us to take some distance from what seems “natural” in our own institutional context and to understand that similar problems can be addressed in different ways. Here again, I realise that this interest goes back a long way and is probably related to the places where I have lived. Liège is close to both the Netherlands and Germany, and I became fascinated early on by the impact of borders on the organisation of territories – as illustrated by the land-use map of the Meuse-Rhine Euregion that I chose for my LinkedIn profile.

What are you working on these days?

My current research mainly focuses on policies aimed at progressively reducing land take (NNLT). I have been working on this issue of land sobriety since my doctoral research, and it continues to gain societal importance in relation to socio-ecological transitions.

I am particularly interested in the possibility of reconciling land sobriety with the socio-economic objectives of housing affordability and reindustrialisation. Indeed, restricting land supply is desirable from an environmental perspective, but it can also contribute to rising housing prices and slow down some industrial projects. It is precisely to limit the contradictions between these different ambitions that we need to improve the effectiveness of spatial planning systems and – needless to say for a PLPR audience – the effectiveness of land policies.

What brings you to PLPR?

My interest in the topics addressed by PLPR has developed gradually. As mentioned above, my first passion was urban geography, driven by a desire to understand how urban areas evolve and function. This interest naturally led me to spatial planning. Spatial planning policies are one of the factors that help explain how cities are organised and, moreover, they can help shape their evolution in a positive direction for the common good.
I then gradually came to realise that planning policies cannot be understood without considering landownership, the associated rights, and the way public decisions transform land values. My doctoral research led me to take a particular interest in property rights. Indeed, to understand the very extensive urban sprawl that characterises Belgium, it is essential to consider the country’s historically landowner-friendly policies. Some have written that the Netherlands can be seen as a paradise for planners. Together with Hans Leinfelder, in a recent comparative book on European land policies, we turned the expression around and described Belgium as a “landowners’ paradise”.

What do you like most about PLPR?

PLPR events provide opportunities to engage with researchers from different disciplines – planning, law, economics, geography, real estate – who share a common interest in land issues. This is probably what I appreciate most. Indeed, in my everyday professional environment, even among planning scholars, land issues are rarely given the attention they deserve.
In addition, PLPR provides an ideal setting for approaching land issues from an international comparative perspective. Discussions with colleagues working in different legal and institutional systems help us to better understand our own system and to question certain assumptions that we tend to take for granted at the national or regional level.

Anecdote: Things we don’t know about you?

Answering the questions for this “Meet the Members” feature reminded me how fortunate I am to work in a field that has fascinated me for as long as I can remember – even if the administrative tasks of an academic are not always quite so fascinating… Several memories then came back to me:at the age of 12, I wrote my final primary-school project on New York, intrigued by the fact that a city could have more inhabitants than a country such as Belgium;at 15, during my holidays and much to my parents’ surprise, I travelled around Belgium and the Netherlands by train to compare their main cities and analyse their centres;at 18, I “published” an article in my secondary school’s magazine criticising car-oriented planning and urban sprawl. I cannot resist sharing a few lines from this 1988 text: “the excessively widespread use of private cars in urban areas leads to many disadvantages that can prove disastrous for the environment and for the living conditions of city dwellers. … The direct consequence of this urban nuisance is the depopulation of cities in favour of distant suburbs.”

My partner has just reminded me of another anecdote. When I took the oath to join the academic staff, she attended the ceremony while pregnant. At the very moment I took the oath before the Rector of the University of Liège, the baby started kicking particularly vigorously. According to her, much more vigorously than usual – although on that point, of course, I am not in a position to judge…