Uplace's his open city in Machelen

Uplace is a project developer which wants to create a mega shopping-, entertainment- and leisure- site in Machelen, under the viaduct in Vilvoorde, next to Brussels. The target is a number of 8 million visitors yearly and has a surface of 900.000m². The Flemish government already delivered a urban planning permission to Uplace, on the terms that they would clean the ground under the viaduct.

 Now legal actions against the permission are taken by surrounding cities like Louvain, Vilvoorde and Grimbergen, but also by Unizo and Greenpeace. There is much media activity around this project and the actions against it. But why do they do this, when work is created and sanitary actions are taken? It’s easily explained by some points!

The main common issues are that such a mega shopping complex is harsh competition for the development of surrounding commercial centers, causing a traffic nightmare and creates a fake city with accompanying environmental problems. The ring of Brussels is saturated, but such a project is authorized. The main thing that can still stop this project is the delivery of an environmental permission, but 8 million visitors and 25,000 vehicle movements per day is certainly a negative effect on the environment. A major expansion of public transport to Uplace gets only a partial relief for the traffic. Mega malls for example are surely seen in the United States, but “they killed more than one American city”, as Tom Vandyck states in De Morgen

Why I consider this as a bubble is probably quiet clear. The project creates a city on its own. You can consider it as open, because the main thing for a shopping mall is to attract the people in, and then keep them there. So it’s open and closed in the same meaning. The project is open to the surrounding bubbles of the neighbor-cities, but wants to ‘steal’ in some way the life of the other bubbles, and surely the money.

source: De Morgen, Brussel Nieuws, De Standaard, vrt Terzake

Open moment: World festival Couleur Café

Couleur café is an every year festival in Brussels where different cultures come together. It is a world festival with different kinds of music on different stages. In between these stages you have food-stands, benches, (cocktail)bars,... Every food-stand is represented by another country. You see people from every nationality together for music from all over the world or just to have a good time. The stages, the food-stands,the people and all other things are like different bubbles coming together in an open culture festival. The different bubbles are also the different people (or groups) that are coming to the festival. You see people from all ages; from Brussels, Flanders or Wallonia or even further away all coming together for this 3 day festival in the heart of Brussels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgq40qiEm8U&feature=player_embedded#!

http://www.couleurcafe.be/

Open city moment Brussels

PLATFORM KANAL is a Brussels citizens' movement. The organization wishes to share information on creative forces in the central urban canal zone in order to increase their presence and visibility, as well as merging them with the local population’s potential. They have their own magazine,they organize workshops and they work together with architects and urban planners to gather information about the canal zone and to think about its future. Every two years the organization organizes 'Festival Kanal'. This creates a moment to investigate the possibilities,challenges and problems in the Brussels canal zone together with the people living there by mobilizing them in a positive way. The canal zone has to deal with a negative image in the city of Brussels and by symbolically 'making the bridge' with this arts- and cultural festival, the organization wants to turn this around and to show that these very lively neigborhoods in the canal zone have something to offer to the city. Often people refer to Molenbeek as a 'no go zone' and the organization turned this around by making it a 'must go zone' filled with artistic interventions and inviting the public to take a walk around the neighborhood to experience it. Here are some examples of urban installations and performances from the festival. CHECKPOINT CHARLIE (Emilio Lopez Menchero) is an identical copy of a checkpoint at the Berlin Wall. It questioned the canal as being a border (or a bridge?) for Brussels. The installation was set up by the social organization ART2WORK that gives the neighborhood youth a chance to have a work experience. It created a lot of discussion and that was exactly the purpose. BODIES IN URBAN SPACE (Cie. Willie Dorner)is the name of this amazing project. 20 dancers spread out in the streets of the old Molenbeek and in the neighborhood of the quays. This surprising parcours of acrobatic human sculptures was very popular with both the 'official' visitors of the festival and the casual passers-by. There were more than 20 other projects like these two in the festival. The festival was very successful, both the organization Platform Kanal an the neighborhoods were put on the map of Brussels. People were moving through streets they had never seen, made contact with others, got some new impressions and had a great time. The program made bridges between territoria, people and disciplines. I think it is clear why I consider this as an open city project. It gets all sorts of people out of their bubbles and mixes them together. Visitors from the city, locals, youth. It opens up the negatively connotated bubble 'Molenbeek' and shows the inner-city population that the canal shouldn't be considered a border for their bubble. Even the people that knew nothing about the festival being organized were involved, due to the installations that took place in their own street. What I like about it is that the organization works on this topic profoundly and that it is not just a one-time-thing. They work on the topic of the canal zone as a border on many, many levels. You can visit the organizations' website at http://www.platformkanal.be