A very urban Belgian population
Belgium has 11.35 million inhabitants for a territory of 30,527 km². This is one of the highest densities in the world (372 inhabitants/km²), the second highest in Europe behind the neighbouring Netherlands and Malta. The majority of the Belgian population is urban due to the country's population density. Brussels-Capital has 19 municipalities and 1.2 million inhabitants, mainly including Brussels (179,000 inhabitants), Schaerbeek (133,000 inhabitants) and Anderlecht (118,000 inhabitants). Antwerp is the second largest city in the country with about the same population, but it is much larger than Brussels (523,000 inhabitants). Next is the very dynamic university city of Ghent (260,000 inhabitants), followed by Charleroi (202,000 inhabitants) and Liège (197,000 inhabitants). At the bottom of the list of cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants are Bruges (118,000 inhabitants) and Leuven (101,000 inhabitants), with Namur in between with 111,000 inhabitants.
Regional disparities
"Belgium is a federal state composed of Communities and Regions This article, which appears at the beginning of the text of the Belgian Constitution, establishes the fact that the kingdom cannot be understood in a uniform way. Three Communities, each based on its own linguistic culture, form the basis of the Belgian identity. To the north of a horizontal line passing just below Brussels is the Flemish Community. The Wallonia-Brussels Federation encompasses Brussels and Wallonia, the French-speaking territories. Geographically, Wallonia shares the south of the country with the German-speaking community, located east of Liège. This division is not without some disparities between the compatriots of the same kingdom. First of all, their numbers are not equal: there are 6.3 million Flemings, 4.6 million French speakers and only 75,000 German speakers. In addition, there are economic differences: Flanders is more open to the world market thanks to its port history, while Wallonia is more oriented towards its direct neighbours (France, Germany, Luxembourg) due to its more central geographical position.
The three Communities in Belgium
The Flemish Region (6.5 million inhabitants) includes the provinces of Flemish Brabant, West Flanders, East Flanders, Antwerp and Limburg. Brussels is the capital of the Flemish Region.
Wallonia (3.5 million inhabitants) includes the provinces of Hainaut, Namur and Liège (which includes the German-speaking eastern cantons), Luxembourg and Walloon Brabant. Namur is the capital.Finally, the Brussels-Capital Region (1.1 million inhabitants), although geographically located within the Flemish Region, is an administrative region in its own right. It is composed of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital district and is officially bilingual.
A language border
In fact, one often hears Belgians themselves speak of a "linguistic frontier", which is enough to imagine the level of misunderstanding, the respective ignorance and a populist tendency that adorns political programmes. The influence of the State is in free fall in the face of community interests. The collective interest is diminishing and undermining a long-standing principle of governance based on solidarity. Demands for fundamental institutional change have reached a peak in recent years.
But in an attempt to definitively divide the north from the south... what about the Brussels region? It remains the eternal bone of contention when political leaders sit down together to at least preserve another very Belgian principle: consensus..
In Belgium, the subject of language could be the subject of entire libraries. A few clarifications are therefore necessary! In Belgium, there is a "border" that separates the country's two main linguistic communities: the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking. It is the result of language laws enacted in the 1960s and 1990s. But the nuances are much more complex. The nineteen municipalities of the Brussels conurbation form a bilingual enclave in the heart of Flemish Brabant. For the Flemings, French is a language learned at school alongside English. Their mother tongue is usually a dialect of Dutch. The older ones often speak French (very) well, while the younger ones clearly prefer English. Please note that the fast and vernacular French of France is not necessarily understandable for your Flemish interlocutor.
A cosmopolitan country
Belgium, like any western country, has many foreigners on its soil. An urban cosmopolitan environment, where nearly 971,000 foreigners are counted on its soil. The Italians lead the way (165,000), followed by the French (140,000), the Dutch (134,000), the Moroccans (82,000), the Spanish (45,000), the Poles (43,000), the Turks (40,000), the Germans (39,000), the Portuguese (33,000), the English (25,000)..
The other nationalities do not exceed 25,000 people per community. Immigration is very unevenly distributed in the kingdom: Brussels has 33% of foreigners, Wallonia 9%, Flanders 6% of the total respective populations in these regions. Integration is not a matter of course, as is often the case.
While Italians (second- or third-generation) are now perfectly integrated and accepted by Belgian society, other populations, particularly North Africans, face the same problems of xenophobia that Italians had to deal with a few decades ago. Paradoxically, it is in Flanders that the xenophobic extreme right is soaring, where foreigners are the least numerous.
And in Namur?
Out of +/- 111,000 inhabitants, the Walloon capital has 10,366 foreigners, or 9.3%, distributed as follows 4 476 European Union nationals and 5 890 non-Europeans. The city center of Namur has 4,815 foreigners, Jambes has 1,980 and Saint-Servais has 1,190. The share of the foreign population in the other sections of the city is not significant.
The three regional Romance languages
Few French people know it, but there are actually three Romance languages in Belgium. Walloon, spoken in most of Wallonia and divided into three sub-regional variations (Centre/Charleroi, Charleroi/Namur and Liège), is the majority language. Picard (in its form influenced by Walloon) is spoken in the western part of the province of Hainaut between Tournai and Mons. Finally, Lorrain, spoken in Gaume around Virton, is also influenced by Walloon.
Here again, the use of the terms "Wallonia" and "Walloon" - to designate the whole territory south of Brussels and its inhabitants - is abusive from a linguistic and ethnological point of view. Especially since Wallonia as an administrative region includes the eastern cantons, inhabited by 75,000 German speakers, who only joined the Belgian state after 1918. Walloon is therefore a dialect spoken in Wallonia. It was still spoken by a large part of the population until the 1930s, but because it is not taught, it is now less and less used. A good part of the population of Wallonia understands it however, at least a minimum.Namur, 26 former communes, 46 districts
On January1, 1977, Belgium made official the largest merger of municipalities ever undertaken to date. There are currently 262 so-called "merged" municipalities in Wallonia. The municipality of Namur (111,000 inhabitants, 175 km²) includes, in addition to the city of Namur, 24 other villages or former municipalities: Beez, Belgrade, Boninne, Bouge, Champion, Cognelée, Daussoulx, Dave, Erpent, Flawinne, Gelbressée, Jambes, Lives-sur-Meuse, Loyers, Malonne, Marche-les-Dames, Naninne, Saint-Marc, Saint-Servais, Suarlée, Temploux, Vedrin, Wépion and Wierde
Their profile (density, environment, relief, landscape, habitat, population category,...) is significantly different from one to the other but the merger brings the inhabitants together around a strong Namurian identity. With respectively a little more than 27,000 and a little more than 20,000 inhabitants, the city center of Namur (also called la Corbeille) and Jambes are the two most populated communes. In third place, Saint-Servais has 9,300 inhabitants. At the other end of the scale, we find Gelbressée (620 inhabitants), Lives-sur-Meuse (473 inhabitants) and Rhisnes with... 39 inhabitants. Note that the latter should not be confused with the neighboring eponymous village merged with the municipality of La Bruyère.
Since 1993, Namur is officially divided into 46 districts. This division makes it possible to group a population according to its affinities and its living environment in a defined and easily delimited space.
The " Corbeille" gathers the three districts of the heart of the city: Namur-Centre, Cathédrale and Célestines.
The first crown constitutes the suburbs of Namur according to the definition of the 19th century. The population density is lower than that of the Corbeille. There are eleven districts. One finds there as well districts of Namur as of the former communes before the fusion. For example: La Plante, Salzinnes, les Bas-Prés, Jambes, Amée...
The second ring is the result of the displacement following the population growth in the 20th century. The green spaces represent an important part of the surface. It is essentially about former communes and some hamlets of them: Belgrade, Flawinne, Saint-Marc, Beez, Fonds de Malonne...
The residential surroundings refer to the rural space inhabited by city dwellers in search of a more airy living environment. This state of affairs dates from the 1960s to the present day. The housing is of the suburban type and greenery is very present. Among these districts: the Citadel, the Hauts-de-Malonne, Suarlée, Erpent...
The rural surroundings constitute the fourth and last ring. These are the most rural districts where the expansion and displacement of the population has not yet taken place en masse. There are fields, meadows and old villages with a rural lifestyle such as : Temploux, Gelbressée, Boninne, Marche-les-Dames, Dave...
