Ostend measured and counted

Ostend was an important port that developed into a bustling city and tourist centre in the course of the nineteenth century. A large part of this past is still shrouded in darkness by the disastrous destruction of important archival collections during and after the Second World War. Authors Pieter François (University of Oxford, Centre for Study of Social Cohesion) and Luc François (Professor Emeritus of History UGent) partly fill this gap with a remarkable and rare study of the Ostend land register on the eve of the Belgian revolution. They describe in detail the spatial organisation, the housing, the port buildings, the landowners, the tenants and the distribution of wealth on the basis of the real estate data collected by the cadastre in 1829-1834. The Quetelet Center processed the data at house level in overview maps.

Article:

Luc François en Pieter François. “Oostende gemeten en geteld: het kadaster van net vóór 1830”, in Als spaken van een tredmolen: gedenkwaardige en- of historische feiten, De Plate. Jubileumboek, 36(2021), 81-95.