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september 14, 2016 \ newsweekly - € 0,75 \ read more at www.flanderstoday.eu current affairs \ p2
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Back to the village
The youngest member of the Paralympics team wins gold in table tennis, while wheelchair racer Marieke Vervoort earns silver
As Mobility Week gets underway, the rural-most parts of the Westhoek are looking into ways to meet public transport needs
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pop-ups bring new life to Hasselt’s unloved station district diana goodwin Follow Diana on twitter \ @basedinbelgium
The #BAMSTAT initiative has brought temporary shops, cafes, bars and even a barbershop to the run-down neighbourhood around Hasselt’s railway station.
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here was an uncharacteristically festive atmosphere on Hasselt’s Stationsplein recently, as residents, shopkeepers and city officials celebrated the opening of #BAMSTAT, a two-month project aimed at revitalising the neighbourhood around the city’s railway station and bus depot. #BAMSTAT – a name that combines Bampslaan and Stationsplein, the two streets leading from the station to the city centre – mixes pop-up shops with social initiatives. In September and October, guest businesses and partners will work together to breathe new life and a safer atmosphere
into the area. Hasselt, for those unfamiliar with the capital of Limburg, bills itself as the Capital of Taste – the taste of good food, good taste in clothes and music, and a taste for the finer things in life. For the most part, the city lives up to its slogan, with a reputation for well-heeled citizens who spend their free time shopping in exclusive boutiques and dining at sleek restaurants. However, the city has another side, one that doesn’t fit with its image of tasteful refinement. Just a few hundred metres from the city centre, the area around the station – itself a relic of the post-war period that’s due to be replaced with a modern facility in the coming years – has long been an eyesore and a source of embarrassment to the city. As is often the case in big cities, the railway station is a
magnet for the city’s homeless and drunks. Many of the buildings and storefronts are empty, lending the neighbourhood an air of neglect and decay. The remaining businesses in the immediate vicinity are mostly cheap takeaways, bars and night shops, in contrast to the high-end shops and restaurants in the city centre. #BAMSTAT is the brainchild of Christiaan Kastrop, whose Hasselt-based firm Comosie was behind similar projects in Genk and Maastricht last year. Kastrop doesn’t believe in freestanding pop-up shops; he came up with the concept of Temporary Lane instead, which combines several shortterm businesses in one place. In Genk, it was a street at a remove from the city’s main shopping areas. In Maastricht, it was an abandoned department store. In Hasselt, the project includes not just retail stores but also continued on page 5