Two sad stories about Brussels, the unloved city
Unpleasant news for the Belgian and European capital Brussels: a famous landmark brasserie/restaurant today closes its doors and the local river, the Zenne, got contaminated after water purification was deliberately stopped. Both events are not exactly world shocking but illustrate the problematic position of Brussels: it's a city which is not allowed to be a city, keeping an unhappy couple (the French and Flemish communities) together.
The brasserie/restaurant we talk about here is De Ultieme Hallucinatie.
This family mansion was built in 1850 in neo classical style. In 1904 the owner Cohn-Donnay, instructed Paul Hamesse (architect 1877 - 1956) to restructure and redecorate his home to a contemporary geometrical Art Nouveau style. The furniture consists mainly of train benches, designed by Henry Vandevelde for the Belgian Railways in 1930.
Deals which changed Belgian media and political history were discussed in this venerable institution. The Rolling Stones, Gari Kasparov and Anatoli Karpov once visited the place.
The Flemish owners, Fred Dericks en Kriz Haepers, turned the historical building into a lively and stylish hang-out, especially for the Brussels' Flemish community. Fred Dericks passed away and Kriz Haepers prefers not to continue the hard work of running De Ultieme Hallucinatie. The brasserie/restaurant came on the market for three million euro but potential investors said the place was too big for normal exploitation and too small for big parties.
Observers fear that Brussels will see the decay or destruction of yet another historical art nouveau building. Publicist Geert van Istendael is one of those who cannot understand why the Flemish authorities don't buy the place to turn it into a Flemish House.
The small river the Zenne is considerably less glamorous compared to De Ultieme Hallucinatie. In the center of Brussels, the Zenne was completely covered up. The Zenne was notorious for being one of Belgium's worst polluted rivers, since all effluents from the Brussels Capital Region were versed in it without treatment.
In March 2007, the completion of new sewage treatment plants, began to remediate this problem. However, last week things went very wrong.
The Brussels North water purification station was shut down. This has resulted in the waste water flushed by 1.1 million citizens of Brussels flowing untreated into the Zenne. The station operator Aquiris had simply ceased treating the water. The company had already halted pumping operations on the river's right bank on 25 November.
The Brussels Water Board and the Brussels Region were immediately informed of that, the water station operator asserts. Almost three weeks passed since the time of the first discharge of untreated water and the reaction of the authorities.
There is a disagreement between the Brussels Region and the Aquiris French parent company, Veolia, on who is to pay for an additional sand filter. The contaminated water will soon reach Antwerp in the Dutch speaking part of the country - contamination does not respect political or language borders.
In my opinion both stories illustrate once again how undervalued as an asset Brussels is in Belgium. Brussels is a motherless child: It could use more money. It could use more attention from the public opinion in Flanders. Instead of fearing that the capital would expand, they could embrace the most international city on its territory.
Instead public opinion in Flanders avoids the capital, where Dutch speakers are a minority. Those who work in the capital hurry away after work. The few (mostly young people) who'd like to live in the city cannot afford it, the presence of international institutions making it an cosmopolitan but also a relatively expensive place to buy property (and Belgians absolutely want to own property, not rent).
The French speaking political parties are not doing a great job governing the city. There are tensions between the Walloon region and the capital. The city itself consists out of 19 municipalities. This of often presented as a smart way to govern a city of more than one million inhabitants in a decentralized way.The reality is that it allows local politicians to run their own fiefdoms.
The only place in Belgium which could be a major international city and which should have the ambition to become another European metropolis such as London or Paris is governed as a small provincial town and its needs are ignored or mistrusted by the two big language communities.
This, of course, is catastrophic. A country lacking an international metropolis often condemns itself to mediocrity. There is a reason why the young, the talented, the dreamers and the visionaries flock to London, Paris or New York. One cannot create a metropolis by decree (except in China maybe), so some regions simply have the bad luck to stay suburban, dull places. Belgium is lucky enough to have Brussels, the capital of Europe, a cosmopolitan city with a lot of charm. We only should really decide to grasp that opportunity and to enhance it instead of ignoring it.
Roland Legrand
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