‘A patchwork sewn together by a lunatic, God knows what sort of junk thrown together.’ This is how the irritated Renaat Braem characterised the Belgian landscape as seen from the air in his pamphlet ‘The ugliest country in the world’ (1968). Over the last half century, this sort of complaint about the lack of planning has alternated with resentment at the surfeit of spatial regulation on the part of the... see more