Wat er hier allemaal te beleven valt. And much more
30-04-2016
Water in bxl
What means water today in Brussels? Where is the Senne? What can the canal offer to the city?
The name Brussels, Bruxelles, Brussel has everything to do with water: it comes from the word 'Broekzele', old flemish, which means more or less 'a place near the swamp'. Yes, in this city before flewed a lot of small rivers. If you take the names of some communes, you directly understand this allready: Molenbeek, Schaerbeek, Etterbeek... 'Beek' simply is the flemish word for 'little river'. And through the centre of the city untill mid 19th century flew this small river, such mythical, painted on a lot of works, and song about by a lot of Brussels' guides: the Zenne (Senne in french).
So it's obvious that water before played a really big role in Brussels. Nowadays all this little rivers from the past and even some lakes (along for ex the Maalbeek in Etterbeek, Elsene, ...) disappeared.
Time to give the water back to the city!!
Dream projects passed the scene last decades, like for example re-open the Senne in the centre of Brussels (a project thought by the asbl 'les Fous de la Senne' or 'Zennezotten'). None of these were realised, of course we have to say that some ideas are quite difficultly doable (re-open the Senne under the Anspach Boulevard for ex is quite an utopic project...).
But some ideas could be realised, for example: Put more fountains in the centre of Brussels. Take the rainwater in big containers to use for plants in parks, ... (al those thousands of liters of water coming froming the sky and wasted after, because directly put in the underground extraction system... ), ... In 2008, in the commune of Ixelles, I participated in an artistic project about water in the city, which resulted in a big expo. This large project was called 'Eauwaterzone'. And I'm really proud of the project I realised for them: I asked to all kind of people to write, draw, ... their dream project for water in the city on a beermap. Examples of what was realised on that moment, you can find on: http://www.eauwaterzone.be/Idee24 . In total I received some 350 beermaps. And later on, I continued the project now and then, which makes that nowadays I gathered more than 400 ideas (of all kinds, and of course some of these are less artistically detailled than others). When you take a short look on some of these 400 ideas, you are quickly and nicely surprised by the creativity of people, and in general their big hope to really take in account a wish to have more water in this city.
These dreams should be taken more seriously by politician. Sometimes it's even easier than we think to realise them.
In this field, dreams about water projects for Brussels, I like to mention also the project 'Pool is cool': http://www.pooliscool.org/english/#re-introducing-open-air-swimming-in-brussels A fight of some activists to have an open air swimming place in Brussels. This is one of my struggles also: how is it possible that this city of more than 1million inhabitants has no place like this? During hot days, young and less yound people start to jump in fountains, the canal close to Anderlecht, ... For example, we have a lot of lakes in this city, why is it not possible to clean one of these and turn it into a nice open swim paradise (like the 'Blaremeersen' in Gent). Come on Pool is cool, and all other people that dream about nice water projects in Brussels: pressure, pressure, and maybe one day it can happen
