Bas Van Heur

Bas van Heur is professor of urban studies, director of the Brussels Centre for Urban Studies, and programme director of the Erasmus Mundus MSc 4Cities as well as the VUB-ULB MSc in Urban Studies.

His main research interest, broadly speaking, is in the politics of urban development. Underlying this interest is a normative concern with state-society relations and the capacity of civic actors to develop public knowledge about the city and democratic forms of collective organization. Key topics: cultural and creative industries, migration and arrival infrastructures, urban laboratories and experimentation, culture and political economy, sociology of science. Most of his current research revolves either around community-led socio-cultural infrastructures (cultural commons, cooperatives, collective ownership) or elite-led cultural initiatives (cultural patronage, arts philanthropy, public-private partnerships, wealth elites).

Research Expertise: arts and cultural industries; socio-cultural infrastructures; urban theory