Openstreets22 Mariti(e)me Neighbourhood

For the 3rd year in a row, the car-free summerstreet, travelling through the neighbourhood, showed that the street is key to improving a neighbourhood's liveability. Openstreets invites neighbours to participate in a wide range of free activities from dance performances to a circus initiation, a future imagination workshop to preparing a meal together. Every street is furnished with furniture to sit or lie down and toys like a sand- and lego box & bikes. As soon as the street 'opens' for new activities, it comes to life like never before. The summer street forges new social networks.

Molenbeek's dense residential fabric is a network of shortcuts that allows motorised traffic to avoid the main traffic lanes. The permanent flux of transit traffic impoverishes social life. Neighbours hardly know each other, children stay indoors because the street is too dangerous. Traffic pushes social life behind the facades.

These neighbourhoods need safe and quality outdoor space. The building blocks consist mainly of apartments without terraces or gardens. Families with children live in small spaces. That is why this year Openstreets also looked, together with the municipality, how a modal filter could relieve the neighbourhood of transit traffic and thus improve liveability all year round.

After summer, during a 5-day summerschool lessons learned were shared with a team of 10 architects, urbanists and other professionals. Concerns and wishes of the neighbours were processed into images and design proposals. A neighbourhood action plan was drawn up with “quick wins” and long term visions to improve the (traffic) liveability. The results of the Openstreets22 Summerschool were collected and printed in a newspaper spread in the neighbourhood on the evening before ‘Open (the) Debate’ (FCF-a in collaboration with BRUZZ & BX1).

Every street is different and has different needs. Openstreets22 wants to use the power of imagination to stimulate the debate about the street.