Land

This article examines whether, and under what conditions, there is room for new mosques in Belgian cities by analyzing how media controversies around mosque projects are assembled. We study a corpus of press articles (2014–2024) using a two-step approach: First, keyword mapping identifies dominant discursive patterns across six themes (mobility, legality, size and visibility, social cohesion and integration, security and extremism, financing). Second, argument coding links lexical signals to public modes of judgment through actor–network theory (ANT) and controversy registers. Applied to five case studies across Flanders, Wallonia, and the Brussels-Capital Region, this framework offers comparative depth. The results show that identity and security controversies frequently outweigh strict urban planning controversies; neutral planning criteria (e.g., traffic congestion, permit compliance) are often recoded as symbolic markers of alterity. Regional contrasts provide nuance to this pattern: in Flanders, politicization through security/identity is salient; in Wallonia, debates emphasize size, form, and spatial integration; in Brussels-Capital, technico-legal compliance intertwines with aesthetic visibility. Media operate as boundary objects that hierarchize registers and amplify controversies. We conclude that mosques are treated less as ordinary urban infrastructure than as contested symbols of belonging and visibility. Moving toward negotiated pluralism requires institutional mechanisms that ensure transparency, equal treatment, local anchoring, and symbolic requalification.

From the 9th century onwards, Tāmdult was one of the three major caravan ports in the Western Maghreb, alongside Sijilmāssa and Nūl Lamṭa. By the mid-20th century, the remains of dwellings, metallurgical production sites and fortifications had been located a few kilometres south of the present-day oasis of Aqqa, which is irrigated by the resurgence of the wadi of the same name. In 1999, our research, which was based on field surveys and aerial photographs, revealed exceptionally well-preserved traces of a large-scale agricultural system and an irrigation canal network adjacent to the ruins. This completed the picture of this pre-Saharan oasis. An initial study was published in 2011. However, the question of the chronological relationship between the two oases, Tāmdult and Aqqa, remained unresolved. Processing recent satellite images (Airbus © 2023) of these two oases and creating a WebGIS interface now enables us to refine and correct our observations from 1999. This new data largely confirms our initial proposals, such as the joint development of an urban settlement and an agricultural area with an irrigation network. Furthermore, these new images show the branching structure of the various water distribution channels, the regularity of the agricultural land parcels and the existence of interstitial rural settlements. They thus reveal a hierarchy in this distribution that was perhaps insufficiently explored in our initial publication. Given the limited historical sources available, we can now make more informed arguments regarding the possibility of the two oases coexisting over time. We can also propose initial hypotheses about the main reasons for the abandonment of one of the oases and discuss the identity of their founders, which could be local tribal groups and/or branches of the Idrisid dynasty. The central issue of the dossier to which our contribution is addressed—‘The Role of Urban Elites in the Construction of Rural Landscape’—is adapted here to the specific characteristics of the pre-Saharan context in terms of both climate and settlement structure.

Understanding cultivated land use transition (CLUT) requires analytical frameworks capable of capturing the interconnected changes in production inputs, land use structure, and multifunctional outcomes. However, existing CLUT studies often rely on fragmented metrics that separately examine dominant or recessive transitions, limiting their ability to reveal the internal mechanisms of land use transition. Therefore, this study developed an integrated “factor-structure-function” analytical framework based on the theory of induced technological innovation. An evaluation system was constructed to operationalize the proposed framework, and Zhejiang Province—a rapidly urbanizing region in southeastern China, was selected as an empirical validation case to demonstrate its analytical value. The results showed that the integrated framework not only identified temporal and spatial patterns of CLUT, but also revealed internal trade-offs and synergies among factor substitution, structural reconfiguration, and functional transition that were not detectable using conventional CLUT metrics. In particular, the framework highlighted unique regional transition pathways driven by different modes of factor substitution. By connecting factor inputs, output structures, and land functions within the integrated framework, this study offers a practical tool for diagnosing CLUT and serves as a methodological guide for future CLUT research in rapidly urbanizing regions.