Brussels for beginners

The Flemish Community Commission offers tours of Brussels’ neighbourhoods to convince more Flemings to move to the capital

It was a disturbing bit of reality that emerged from a report last year by US traffic information platform Inrix: After Milan, Brussels and Antwerp have the worst traffic congestion in the western world. To try to ease the burden of commuting, the Flemish Community Commission is hosting tours of Brussels’ residential areas for commuters who live in Flanders – hoping to convince them to live where they work.

Brussels and Flanders hold quite a lot of records, but there is one they would rather do without: traffic jams. Because of their lack of spatial planning, their small size and tonnes of commuters and foreigners just passing through, the regions are at the top of the European charts when it comes to losing precious time in traffic.

Daan Bauwens
(June 19, 2013)

Red Star Line campaign in New York

The soon-to-open Antwerp museum beckons to American tourists

Antwerp’s Red Star Line Museum, due to open in September, aims to become a top attraction for American tourists, according to the festive launch of a campaign in New York last week.

In the sumptuous surroundings of The Glasshouses, an event hall in the arty Chelsea neighbourhood of Manhattan, aldermen Philip Heylen and Koen Kennis of the city of Antwerp and Peter De Wilde of Toerisme Vlaanderen joined the museum’s ambassador, the Belgian- American fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg, to mark the start of a promotion aimed specifically at the American market.

Alan Hope
(June 19, 2013)