B-1010 for 2010 : this month, AUFO, a proposal by Koen Wastijn (in : the Bulletin, October issue)

This month, we present a proposal by Koen Wastijn(B)Aufo,2009.

Despite the seductive character of the image, the subject is not easy to identify. There is a suggestion of flowing units, which we might associate with blood cells, or, influenced by the title, with unidentified flying objects. In either case, the picture has a special aura.
The reality is much more prosaic : Aufo is in fact a satellite photograph of Brussels’ ring road during rush hour. Although situated mostly outside the borders of the Brussels Region, the ring road encircles it and serves as a vital artery for the capital, channelling in hundreds of thousands of commuters who contribute to the city’s economy. And this is where the initial associations with life blood and/or with “alien visitors” could indeed find some indirect relevance : They actually apply quite well to this daily influx of people into Brussels. For the daily congestion on the ring is a direct consequence of the flight of the middle-class from the city to the suburbs during the second half of the last century. Their exodus is directly linked to the subsequent impoverishment of central residential neighbourhoods and to the development of further central areas as office and service districts. Indeed, Brussels’ economic paradoxes are encoded in Wastijn’s image of the ring.
The city is the major focus of negotiations between this country’s Flemish and French-speaking communities : 25 percent of Belgium’s national wealth is created in a city which harbours only 10 percent of the country’s population. In terms of wealth creation, Brussels ranks (after London and Frankfurt) as Europe’s third richest urban centre. But since the majority of well-off people who earn their money in the capital live and pay taxes outside the Brussels Region, the sums going out far exceed the meagre amounts brought into the city through occasional refinancing deals. For the sake of Europe’s capital, should the partial regionalisation of the income tax be pursued during the coming fiscal reform, it seems logic that the origin of wealth creation should be integrated / taken into account as an important element.