Petition updateBruxelles-Midi: la gare qui fait honte / Brussel-Zuid: een Brusselse schandvlekEnglish version ! ... already more than 4.000 supporters
Comité d'habitants de Saint-Gilles
21 Mar 2018 — EN Bruxelles-Midi: the rail station of shame in Brussels Bruxelles-Midi, the Brussels South Station, is the biggest railway station in our country. Every day it receives 60.000 travelers and daily commuters. For foreign tourists coming from London or Paris, it is the "gateway to Brussels", their first contact with Belgium. For these tourists as well as for all citizens of Brussels, and in particular for local residents, the South Station and its filthy dilapidated exterior are shameful. The public spaces around it are badly marked and of poor urban design. And what of the "Tri postal", the former postal sorting facility next to the station? A decrepit building of several thousand square meters, abandoned for 20 years, located barely two kilometers from the Grand-Place. How can a venue with such potential, in an ideal location, be left empty while the cultural and social non-profit sectors are in desperate need of space? As it awaits its eventual conversion, this brick giant, not without architectural value (it was designed by the same modernist architect Adrien Blomme who built the WIELS building), is a spectacle of desolation unworthy of a European capital: graffiti-covered walls, dirty sidewalks, windows with broken glass and torn blinds ... the SNCB rail authority has left the building in a state of ruin that creates a sense of insecurity and harms the image of Brussels. A practice that city authorities would not allow any private owner... Neighbours and area inhabitants, Brussels residents, commuters ... we petition the Brussels Region and the SNCB to: - Attend urgently to the in-depth renovation of the areas adjacent to the station, in order to develop public spaces of high quality, as foreseen in the Master Plan, in concertation with residents and within an open participative framework. - Enhance the buildings which are representative of architectural modernism, and clean the postal sorting center as it awaits its conversion. - Allow temporary occupation for business, social, or artistic pursuits before the start of renovation, via agreements with associations and collectives... - Consider the future conversion of the postal center building in terms of mixed activities at the ground level and possibly the upper levels (retail businesses, child care center, workshops, hospitality operators and roof terrace...) to ensure this section of public space remains alive outside of office hours, in a neighborhood where windowless façades are already far too many. Considering the resources that will soon be invested nearby within the scope of the Contrat de rénovation urbaine (CRU, urban renovation contract) « avenue du Roi », it would be unfortunate if the avenue Fonsny were to lead to ... a No man's land.
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