House TP

摘要

Almost two decades after the Second World War, Belgian folklorist and academic Frans Perckmans wrote wistfully about a vision of a city from his childhood. The streets were filled with wandering vendors dealing in Algerian carpets, German and Hungarian travelling musicians, balloon salesmen, beggars and street children. Door-to-door salesmen sold mussels by the bucket for one franc. His city was Mechelen in Flanders. Nestled between Brussels, Antwerp and Leuven, Mechelen was once an important religious, political, cultural and economic centre, with a plethora of palaces still littered about the city to bear testament. But an industrial revolution, two world wars and Belgium's fanatical obsession with the car thoroughly put paid to Mechelen's colourful street culture by the 1960s and '70s. What replaced it was roads. Lots of them. Mechelen's canals were covered in the early 20th century in the name of hygiene; as the century progressed, more and more of its character was paved over. By the late '90s the city had lost its soul. Mechelen was referred to as the 'sick man' of Belgium, with high crime rates and the city's largest political party run by far-right nationalists.