Page 57 - Tussen binnenstad en spoor - Leuven 2003
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Between the town centre and the railway
__ Office development in Louvain 2003
MARC DUBOIS
Zicht van het project vanuit de loopbrug. Social developments often have repercussions on Belgian project is the development round the ment plan, but rather a study into the possibilities
important choices in urban development. With South Station in Brussels. But projects were also that the concrete location offers and “an initial for-
Vue du projet à partir de la passerelle. the laying of the rail network and the construction launched in other cities such as Antwerp, Leuven, mulation of the “programmatonic” capacity that
of the train stations in the 19th century, this Bruges, Hasselt, Ghent and Sint Niklaas. Some makes use of the possibilities of this site.” The
View of the project from the footbridge. opportunity was seized in all cities, including have remained in the proposal phase, others are Urban project oscillates between structure planning
Leuven, to expand them. The station was the already under way. What ten years ago was seen and architecture. The urban project developed by
© SAMYN AND PARTNERS brand new heart of the city, the centre of the new as unmentionable and unrealistic, is now given a Marcel Smets and his team in Leuven has stemmed
(Pascal MONNIEZ & Frédéric CLESSE) mobility. After 1945, station areas gradually lost chance. The city in Flanders that has played a pio- from the pertinent dissatisfaction with the existing
their crucial significance in the urban fabric. At the neering role in the reassessment of station loca- instruments available for urban development. An
end of the 20th century, stations and their envi- tions is Leuven. Furthermore, cities abroad, such urban project leads to very taut and precisely deve-
rons were given a new lease on life. Confronted as Basel in Switzerland, are opting resolutely for loped Special Planning Schemes (SPS).
with the major problem of mobility, the acceler- optimising these top locations to concentrate the
ated saturation of our road infrastructure, there need for offices round the stations. The first initiatives of the urban project for the sta-
had long been a call to stimulate transport by rail. tion area date from 1991. Marcel Smets deserves
A growing awareness of the mobility problem and __ LEUVEN SETS THE EXAMPLE the credit for bringing together the various part-
the environment influenced the urban develop- ners (city council, the Flemish Community, NMBS
ment agenda towards possibilities that station The transformation of the area round the station in [Belgian Rail] / Eurostation) who are directly
areas could acquire in future as important nodes Leuven is undoubtedly the example par excel- involved in this complex urban node, in order to
on the dense network of our rail infrastructure. lence for another approach to urban develop- approach the problems in a strategic manner and
Instead of having large companies from the ter- ment. At the end of the 1980s, the Urban Project to table new proposals. For the first time in
tiary sector establishing farther out along motor- Team of the Catholic University of Leuven, headed Belgium, cooperation emerged between state-
ways and in laid out “green parks,” town by professor Marcel Smets, started to develop an owned companies and public authorities for an
planners, and therefore also the governments, approach to an innovative urban development approach to a station area, stimulated by the
called for intensifying locations round the stations. strategy that it described as “urban project” 1. design team and the city council. If there is no
The station environs now occupied a renewed According to Bruno De Meulder, the urban project joint input, every major urban project is doomed
place in the urban dynamic. The laying of the tries to “profile itself as a way of conducting to fail. Bringing into line the various partners, with
European HST network bolstered this develop- research on, and of taking action in the city, that is their specific requirements and expectations in
ment even more in the course of the 1990s. broader and more inclusive than architecture. In such an urban operation is the starting point of a
the urban project, the architecture of the building complex development process. Only in this way
At the end of the 1980s, the Belgian Railways is less central, but rather a spatially translated does a synergy emerge to the benefit of the entire
realised they owned much land with great poten- development concept that allows for variation as it project.
tial, immoveable assets that they want to develop materialises and produces differentiation” 2.
together with other partners. The greatest such Urban project is not a traditional urban develop-
