Engineering the Rural Idyll: Road Construction and the Peri-urban Landscape in Belgium, 1925-1940

As in many other Western countries, the road network in Belgium was subject to an extensive modernisation project during the interbellum period. This paper analyses how this project affected the relationship between the road and landscape. In the absence of a comprehensive landscape project for road construction from the government, other parties played an important role in defining the road's relation to the landscape. Through their publications, images and discourses, an idealised image of landscape-a rural idyll-became interwoven with the narrative of the modern road. We will first position this Belgian project vis-a-vis other road projects abroad, and describe why landscape was a non-issue for the Belgian government and its engineers. Subsequently, we will examine how other parties-the road association, the construction industry, urban planners and architects-appropriated fragments of landscape to frame or support their own projects.