Presently, the numerous initiatives within Flanders (Belgium) that focus on an (more) inclusive economic participation are often poorly coordinated and physically dispersed in nature. As such, there exist considerable thresholds for socially deprived urban citizens to actually find, use and benefit from these initiatives. Together with some Flemish cities and social enterprises, a multidisciplinary research team of the University of Antwerp has therefore launched the innovative concept of “inclusive economic participation sites”. In view of the actual use of these inclusive economic participation sites by Flemish policy makers, the research team has started to specify relevant governance items and requirements for the creation, development and exploitation of these inclusive economic participation sites. Inductive inspiration is found within two explorative research projects consisting of 25 inclusive economic participation sites “related” practices and six focus group debates with social and economic policy experts (i.e. inclusive economic participation-Reference-Platforms). As such, the researchers inductively uncover seven strategic and four spatial governance requirements as well as one strategic–spatial interaction governance requirement. All requirements are defined, explained and illustrated within the article.

Different contextual frameworks seem to work as 'restrictive' for redesign during the adaptive reuse of all kinds of historical heritage sites, all over the world, that have lost their initial function. However, different contextual frameworks can also work as 'challenging' for the redesign, as we found out during the adaptive reuse of particular historical heritage sites, being the former Agriculture Pauper Colonies of the Flemish municipalities 'Wortel' and 'Merkspas' (i.e. in the Province of Antwerp, Belgium), into an Inclusive Economic Participation (IEP) Site. This concept of an 'IEP Site' was considered to be an interesting option for reuse by the local governments involved. After all, the main objective of an IEP Site relates strongly to the initial function of both colonies (i.e. the support of poor citizens). In this paper, we will demonstrate that the 'heritage framework', 'institutional framework' and 'strategic ambition framework' of the reuse not only works as 'restrictive', but also works as 'challenging' and 'inspiring'. As such, the redesign, involving the architectural techniques of 'photoshops', 'scenarios' and 'organograms', resulted in creative, flexible, innovative and mind-opening solutions for all partners involved.

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