Brussels locals breathe new life into Tour&Taxi wasteland

At one time, the rubbish dumped over the railings of the Jubelfeest bridge in this long-neglected corner of Brussels was visible from space. Now an urban park has brought new life to this entire neighbourhood in the Anderlecht canal area.

“When we started to develop the park, it was horrific – rubbish everywhere,” says Martine Cantillon of the regional government agency Leefmilieu Brussel. And they’ve noticed an improved level of respect since the biennial Parckdesign has been lodging there, “with all of the dynamic it brings – no vandalism, no damage. People seem quite happy; they’re all mixing very well.” 

The new park on the Tour & Taxis site is now developing its second phase, while the first phase, stretching from railway line 28 and the Pannenhuis metro station to the Jubelfeest bridge, is up and running. The installations put there for this year’s Parckdesign festival, an urban planning event organised every two years, are to stay in place for another year and are now being run by the non-profit ParckDesign T&T, a local neighbourhood association.

“The association was created to be able to prolong the installations of Parckdesign and to manage them in a durable way after the festival is over,” explains Driss Kasri, one of the non-profit’s administrators.

By day, Kasri runs a comic book store in the centre of the city. The rest of the time he is kept busy by the demands of the park, as are some 60 other locals who are about to take over maintenance of the Parckdesign infrastructure.

That decision was only recently made, but the group has been working towards it for two months. “Ever since we saw the installations and were convinced that it’s absolutely essential to have some kind of activity in the park for the benefit of the neighbourhood and the city,” says Kasri.

Experimental laboratory

Parckdesign used to be a competition, more aimed at designers of urban furniture. Later it was transformed into a sort of experimental laboratory. In 2012, the theme was how to reform the vacant and deserted spaces in Brussels.

This year’s edition, which will end later this month, took over a project that was already in the planning stages: the creation of a park stretching from the NMBS Line 28 to the canal. The park follows the line of the cutting that used to bring trains to the customs sheds and Tour & Taxis warehouses. “We thought it would be good to have the synergy and to install Parckdesign there and get the local residents really involved,” explains Cantillon.

The part about the rubbish seen from space is true. When Google Maps first introduced its satellite view of Brussels, you could clearly see the white Brussels rubbish bags, hundreds of them. They had been tossed over the bridge railings, sometimes by locals.

Kasri’s partner, Tessa Poldervaart, became involved in the ParckDesign T&T project after renovation mishaps. “We decided to renovate our house, and after we’d renovated it was damaged, which is something that happened to a lot of houses around here,” she says.

She was so upset that she began going outside more, wandering around the area, which was then still vacant land. “I came across some people, two or three really interesting people, with whom it seemed to click right away. Then one day we just started cleaning the streets.”

The bridge  had the worst kind of rubbish, Poldervaart remembers. Since the town council wouldn’t take action, they decided to clean the place up themselves, and they even got their kids involved. “That’s the kind of activity that brings you together, and in fact it was enjoyable,” she says. “Instead of concentrating on our own problems, we turned outwards to something more social. And the problem that at one point seemed so dramatic and insurmountable then moved into second place.”

Kitchen gardens

A glasshouse situated between the two bridges, the Farmhouse, is the central spot in the park. It’s a meeting house that also houses workshops and can transform into a cafe with food and drinks. Just across is the communal table, long enough to seat 20 down each side, with gaps in the centre through which potted herbs and other aromatics grow. Locals can eat what they’ve bought at the cafe or bring their own picnic.

KotKot is the chicken run where hens are free to root around. It was recently augmented by the arrival of two sheep. The park also houses six beehives in brightly-coloured geometric blocks. A mobile beehive that can go around the city, Beecar gives bees the opportunity to feast on flowers and plants from different areas, while spreading the message of the importance of urban bees to the population.

One side of the park also features the kitchen gardens, run by the project’s “farmers”, as they call themselves, all of them local residents. The vegetables are grown in raised beds, a technique that allows cultivation on hillsides. The farmers are assisted by the Nos Pilifs farm, a sheltered workshop in Neder-over-Heembeek, Flemish Brabant.

Farmtruck is a mobile kitchen, restaurant, classroom and even a sound-stage for performances, that takes the Parckdesign idea out into the surrounding city.

A high return

It’s been proved time and time again that projects that get local people involved repay their investment many times over by reducing crime and vandalism, helping people feel more secure and eliminating problems like litter and tagging.

Kasri confirms those findings. “At the outset, the project had one specific aim: to create a park,” she says. “Research has also shown that people’s emotions are intensified in connection with a park: people feel better. The well-being it brings is clear.”

For Kasri, it’s about more than just the greenery, the open space and the fresh air. “There’s the sense of taking ownership of a space,” she says, adding that the site is owned by rail infrastructure company Infrabel, which subsequently donated it.

“We’ve made it a public space,” Kasri continues, “and are allowing the local people to manage it for themselves. People realise they’re being offered something magnificent – not just a place to stroll with the children, but the ability to create a local dynamic, and they step up.”

From ephemeral to durable

The local residents taking part in the project span a variety of cultures and origins as well as social classes. One man who’s very involved speaks only a mixture of Romanian and Spanish and had been discreetly sleeping rough in the area before the transformation began. When Parckdesign moved in, he signed up.

The chicken run was originally kept illegally on the land, but it seemed a shame not to have one, so the owner was encouraged to submit an application for funding as part of the project, which was approved.

The Farmhouse and most of the other installations that are part of Parkdesign will remain in place for another year, and this might be more than the residents bargained for.  “How they manage things is not going to be easy,” says Cantillon. “The initial enthusiasm was huge, and everything was going well when we were there to help, but we’ll have to see how things work out when they’re on their own.”

The project is five months old now, which means that the participants have yet to go through a winter. “That’s part of the problem when you have a festival and all sorts of installations that are supposed to last for five months,” Cantillon says. “Then you have to transform it from something ephemeral into something more durable. There will need to be changes. There won’t be anything like the number of activities in winter as there were this summer.”

The association is ready to take on the challenge, the first part of which will be how to make the Farmhouse usable during the winter. The second part will be raising funds to keep things going. “This is a job that has to be done,” Kasri says. “It’s not always easy to find the time but, look, it’s a job that means something in many different ways – for the neighbourhood, for the quality of life, for our children. Getting people involved isn’t always easy, but it’s the only way to go about it.”

How to get to Parkdesign: take metro line 6 to Pannenhuis, cross the road from the exit and follow the fork-and-spade stencils on the ground. There’s also an entrance from the end of the bridge on Jubelfeestlaan

Photo by Bruno Vitasse