ernized the port's infrastructure over a 10-year period, with national funding, intended to build a set of canal docks. The broader importance was to facilitate the growth of the north-eastern Antwerp metropolitan region, which attracted new industry. Extending the linear layout along the Scheldt River, planners designed further urbanization along the same linear city model. Satellite communities would be connected to the main strip. Ryckewaert, argues that in contrast to the more confused Europoort plan for the port of Rotterdam, the Antwerp approach succeeded because of flexible and strategic implementation of the project as a co-production between various authorities and private parties.
Starting in the 1990s, Antwerp successfully re-branded itself as a world-class fashion centre. Emphasising the avant-garde, it tried to compete with London, Milan, New York and Paris. It emerged from organised tourism and mega-cultural events.
Historical population
This is the population of the city of Antwerp only, not of the larger current municipality of the same name.
� 1374: 18,000
� 1486: 40,000
� 1500: around 44/49,000 inhabitants
� 1526: 50,000
� 1567: 105,000 (90,000 permanent residents and 15,000 "floating population", including foreign merchants and soldiers. At the time only 10 cities in Europe reached this size.)
� 1575: around 100,000 (after the Inquisition)
� 1584: 84,000 (after the Spanish Fury, the French Fury and the Calvinist republic)
� 1586 (May): 60,000 (after siege)
� 1586 (October): 50,000
� 1591: 46,000
� 1612: 54,000
� 1620: 66,000 (Twelve Years' Truce)
� 1640: 54,000 (after the Black Death
