peer reviewed ; Urbanization in Belgium is a process of diffusion rather a process of urban concentration, though the country is very densely populated. In this process the state does not look to have a leading role. The paper examines how the housing policy determines this process of urbanization, namely by promoting the ownership and the individual house. The housing policy, initiated in years of deep social crisis, can only be understood as an upper-class response to the riots in 1886 : the housing policy is intended to give and enforce a social definition of working class, with various interpretation granted by the political opposing forces. The “garden-city” model was then promoted because it allowed to make apolitical compromise between these interpretations. But it was an ideological model with only a few realisations. However it allowed the dominant preference for individual housing to become the real model wich was implemented through the numerous measures wich constitutes the housing policy. In the following stages, a lot of measures came to enlarge the benefit of the public aid to other social groups. From this analysis, it becomes clear that one of the social functions of the housing policy is to enforce the different representations of the social structure wich do no longer need a moralizing discourse because of the hidden connections between the space, the social structure and the policy system. ; Le mode de diffusion en Belgique apparaît plus comme un processus de diffusion que de concentration bien que la population belge soit néanmoins très dense. Dans ce mécanisme, on doit remarque que l’Etat ne joue pas un rôle moteur, et qu’il laisse toute l’initiative aux actions individuelles. Cet article examine comment la politique publique du logement intervient dans ce processus d’urbanisation par la promotion de la propriété et de la maison individuelle. La politique du logement lancée dans des années de crise profonde doit surtout être comprise comme une réponse des groupes dominants aux émeutes de ...