Qui a tué notre quartier: Stalingrad - Lemonnier

Looking at Brussels’ history of urban transformation can feel like looking at a doll cut up and stitched back together, again and again: parts opened up, rearranged, and sacrificed, with families and activities displaced in the face of pending demolition permits. Mais qui a tué notre quartier ? A question that sounds like an accusation, because it is one. In Brussels, our popular neighborhoods are too often treated as available ground for other people’s futures: visions come down from above, sold in the name of urgency, necessity, and progress, while those who already live there are expected to adapt, step aside, or disappear.

In a series of conference-debates, Dérive invites you on an investigative quest that asks us to think of the loss of a neighborhood not as a single event, but as a process made of plans, demolitions, pending permits, delays, expert narratives, and everyday urban violence. The ambition is clear: to centralize the neighborhoods where strategic territorial projects land, and to anchor the reflection in that territory.

And today, where else to start than Stalingrad-Lemonnier, faced with le chantier du siècle, the construction of métro 3.

18:30 doors
19:00 conversation starts
20:30 conversation ends
23:00 bar closes

ACT 1 — CRIME SCENE (THU 24.09.2026)
Like the opening of a crime thriller we already know by heart: a central, historic neighborhood, dead on arrival — a corpse that demands an interrogation. What if residents, shopkeepers, and users were to come together to name a culprit? What leads would they follow? Would they understand the system to blame? In this investigative quest — a forensic inquiry into the murder of a neighborhood, in the presence of the victims —we follow the testimonies and the people who helped create the neighbourhood, establish its reputation, and gather evidence of a planned death.

Speakers & interventions:

Chérine Layachi (moderation)
"knows the ins and outs of the struggle in this territory; the organisations, the alliances and the dead ends..."

Alice Camerlinckx (inhabitant)
"a former resident who tried to document and archive neighborhood life as evidence of..."

Siham Lachiri (inhabitant)
"if the neighborhood had eyes it would be... a window with a view on Palais du Midi"

Tim Cassiers (mobility staff member at BRAL)
"knows how to translate complex urban dossiers and the bureaucratic whirlwind like the back of his hand..."

ACT 2 — GRIEF
Cities are shaped by countless forms of everyday violence and loss. In the face of urban transformation, some losses are immediately visible: evictions, expropriations and demolitions. Others emerge more slowly—the disappearance of relationships, memories, practices and meanings attached to a place. This act grieves the life and identity of a neighbourhood, as well as the possible futures taken away from it. We continue our investigation into the planned “murder” of a neighbourhood, with a specific focus on commercial gentrification. Looking beyond the current metro project to the longer history of expropriations around Brussels-Midi station; How do pressure, forced displacement and the loss of a neighbourhood’s identity unfold? Do the same mechanisms repeat themselves over time? How can we make slow and partly invisible forms of violence perceptible?

Speakers & interventions:

Chérine Layachi (moderation)
"living above her parents’ shop on boulevard Lemmonnier; the struggle to defend the neighborhood identity hits close to home, which she takes on through multiple roles ..."

Mae de Monchy (moderation)
"critical geographer who can testify to the authority of maps and plans, and likes to question whether the master’s tools can be evidence-practices that help interpret who..."

Abdellali Hajjat (GERME Université Libre de Bruxelles)
"passing the street daily, he was in a great position to map the movements of shops and analyse urban transformation from a sociological angle, attuned to discrimination"

Nour Eddine Layachi (association de commerçants Stalingrad-Lemonnier)
"as founder of a local shopkeepers’ union he knows the daily grind of the commerces and can shed light on how to represent and defend their fate one storefront at a time"

Gwennaël Brees (historian & filmmaker)
"inhabitant of a neighbourhood notorious for resisting expropriations and evictions… and like the Marolles itself, a rumoured documenter of local urban struggles in Brussels"

ACT 3 — RESURRECTION/ SURVIVAL
What remains after the damage? What can still be defended, repaired or reimagined? This final act turns from mourning towards action—not as a fantasy of restoring the past, but as an opportunity to ask what kinds of urban life can still be built, protected and fought for. The future of the Palais du Midi is being shaped by the City of Brussels, STIB and the Brussels-Capital Region. The proposed plans risk destroying a key social space in the neighbourhood, used by young people, schools, local businesses and sports groups. At the same time, the future of the mobility project remains uncertain. Is the project worth the material and immaterial loss it may cause? And what does it mean to plan the program of the palais du midi, without a meaningful contestation ? This act places the Palais du Midi’s social heritage at the centre of the discussion. By making visible the relationships, practices and forms of collective life that already exist there, we ask how users and residents can have a meaningful role in shaping the site’s future. The discussion will examine the lack of transparency and the dispossession of the Palais du Midi’s main users, while also opening up a question of collective action: what can still be defended, and how can people organise to imagine and fight for a different future?

Speakers & interventions coming soon-ish <3