Building mediapark.brussels: at the crossroads of media policy and urban development

This chapter focuses on the inception phase of a policydriven creative cluster in Brussels called mediapark.brussels. This 10-year urban and property development project around the existing site of the public broadcasting companies VRT and RTBF must result in an attractive urban area for media companies, professionals, communities and entrepreneurs to live and work in. To this end, different regional and local authorities as well as public administrations and organisations are contributing to this project. The chapter outlines the current policy framework in which the mediapark.brussels is being developed. The insights gained through the case study show the issues a government-led cluster initiative can be confronted with, especially in a multi-level governance model. Belgium, with is federal structure made up of (language-based) communities and (territorial) regions, forms an interesting context to study the interplay between various policy levels, considering that the media are a competence of the Communities and not of the Government of the Brussels Capital Region which initiated mediapark.brussels. The resulting tensions that emerge in the development of the project are discussed: a tension between urban and cultural development, between local and international perspectives, and between a wide-spectrum and a specialised media cluster. The findings will be of specific interest to policy researchers of and policy officers in public administrations in complex, multi-level governance contexts.