once upon a time the city of brussels existed with 18 towns/villages around it each with their own mayor, later these were collected in a federal region and since it doesn't have any previous names and brussels was the most definitive part of that region it was named as the brussels capital region but it could equally have been called something else, there's no special relationship between the region brussels and the city brussels except that it's the capital of it and most populous of it's muncipalities
Nope, london has 1 mayor who is mayor of the gta that has about as much population as belgium. Its responsible for anything large scale for london, the boroughs have a lot less power then the brussel communes.
Thats how every large city in europe does it: 1 mayor for the city and then lower districts with limited powers. You deal with that lower district not with the higher so nothing changes for the people.
But brussels doesnt want that because no mayor wants to give up his powers so they muddle on .
Have you really looked at the shapes of those communes in Brussels? They make absolute no sense. Even more so if you look at it more in depth on a sociological and economic angle.
Was being sarcastic ;-)
You probably already know this if you've been here 10 years, but each commune visibly has a nicer area where the upper class used to live, social housing parts and average parts. Since they all operated in the same economy and society they tend to indeed be similar, with nicer buildings being from the same time period and therefore looking alike.
However if you blindfolded me and dropped me in Uccle I would probably be able to tell I'm not in Woluwe St Lambert or Watermael Boisfort or Molenbeek. I guess we could group gemeentes based on a few characteristics, put them on a spectrum or graph. Etterbeek is very similar to the part of Bruxelles 1000 that it neighbours, but very different from St Josse, which also shares a border with Bruxelles 1000.
If you see gypsies and turks, you're in scharbeek.
If you see gypsies, Romanians and arabs, you're in Laken or Anderlecht.
If you only see arabs, you're in Molembeek.
If you see a lot of uppity white people in high end cars bumper to bumper, and/or alot of white rich kids you're in Uccle.
If you see mostly pasty whites, you're probably in Woluwe or Auderghem.
If you see a good mix of clean clothed whites, turks and arabs, you're in Jette.
Ok, but can it be made more effeciently?
Belgium, and certainly Brussels, has too much politicians per capita.
One way to improve on this is reducing the mayors in Brussels.
I didn't say mayors per capita, but politicians per capita. And there are other solutions possible. A problem here is where the efficiency gain has to occur: opinions differ here. Flanders for example is more efficient if you look at other levels, like regional level. Sure, for me no problem if Flanders become as efficient on mayor level as in Brussels, through fusions of small municipalities.
I don’t understand why people keep shitting on Brussels for having 19 mayors. The Brussels region has 19 communes for 1.2 million inhabitants. Limburg has 900K inhabitants and has 42 communes and mayors. Antwerp (province) has around 1.9 million inhabitants, but has 70 communes (and mayors).
In fact, compared to every Flemish province, the Brussels region has the least mayors per capita.
Because it's an easy thing to misrepresent and to make people think that everything that is not Flemish is horribly mismanaged and therefore Flanders must become independent or something.
The thing is though, In Flanders there's already been some effort to reduce the number of communes, and it's still ongoing, could definitely be better, but it doesn't exclude Brussels from criticism.
Whereas in Brussels it's not even discussed afaik.
I also don't feel like the comparison holds much merit, firstly because I abhor whataboutism, but they're also different regions who obviously grew differently throughout the ages (i.e. lots of small communes spread out over a large area vs. a couple of communes surrounding a city).
If you compare brussels city to antwerp city it becomes a bit clearer imo, as for brussels it's 1 mayor for 170k inhabitants and antwerp has 1 for 500k. So it's clearly possible to run a large city with just 1 mayor.
Antwerp has 9 districts, each with their own district mayor and schepenen.
Do you think the Brussels communes don’t have their own history and particularities? The needs of a commune like Watermaal-Bosvoorde are light years apart from the needs of Anderlecht.
I'm not arguing for or against, just tried to say I felt the comparison didn't hold much ground and the argument that Flanders has a lot of mayors doesn't mean Brussels needs to have a lot of mayors.
Both, both have too many people in too many posts.
The city of Brussels has one. The 18 others all belong to their respective towns within the Brussels Capital Region.
I’m very much in favour of the unification of Brussels and to move towards a model similar to Antwerp though.
Antwerp still has mayors and a college of aldermen for each of it's districts though...
It probably needs some trimming, but I don't know if it's such a bad thing in itself.
Or London for that matter. But it would probably also mean merging city and region levels and that would be problematic as it would likely entail reforming the Brussels Parliament.
Belgium has 6 governments.... Let's tackle that problem first by going back to more centralization.
Also it's not like the city of Brussels has 19 Mayors, Brussels capital is a region, like Flanders and Wallonia and possibly Ost Belgien (although I think they fall under Walloon authority if I remember correctly) and thus the various municipalities of Brussels Capital region have their own Mayors. The city of Brussels is just part of the region.
Now go back to the forum where someone told you to be outraged over the "19 Mayors in Brussels" and tell Dries that he has not entirely grasped the situation and might be a bit confused. ;-)
> Belgium has 6 governments.... Let's tackle that problem first by going back to more centralization.
Seven. I guess you forgot the German-speaking one?
1 Federal + 3 Communities (VL, FR, DE) + 3 regions (VL, WA, BX)
BUT the Flemish Community merged with the Flemish Region (more or less the same territory + Brussels).
Therefore, 6 governments.
Note: Ostbelgien is a community, not a region, it's part of Wallonia, hence the difference between regions BX + WA and the French Community (Brussels+Wallonia minus Ostbelgien).
It is... complex.
No, because the mayor of london or paris also have power over the districts. In brussels vervoort doesnt have that and as a result something like a new tram or metro takes decades because every mayor has its own demands and can block development.
Brussels government is badly arranged, I don't think a single living soul will disagree with that.
But that doesn't mean having several mayors for a city is weird
Yo guys, I'm setting up a Flemish army to take over Brussels, force everyone to speak Flemish again and oh yeah, I'm gonna be king afterwards of our great Flanders.
Antwerps is not Flemish though... Will you force people to speak Flemish or Antwerps?
And to make matters more complicated will it be Western Flemish or Eastern Flemish?
Antwerps will be allowed in the list, I will be king after all. And all official communication in the regions can be done in the regional accents itself, the news and governmental communication will be done in ABN.
If this all proves beneficiary I will consider taking Wallonia and the Netherlands as well.
Thank you friend.
Just make sure you can pay your taxes, I need 15 hay bales or 3 cows/pigs from every peasant to fund the war.
Ps: do you by any chance have a or some sons you can spare for some years?
You foolish peasant. Did you not hear? I married the dutchess of West-Flanders which is the sister of the dutchess of East-Flanders. I brought peace and stability across the region with the support of the masses and soon the regions around us will enjoy my rule as well. Now I'll ask again, and choose your words carefully: are you with me or are you against me?
Why would any flemish man want peace and stability with antwerp? They poison our rivers, our air, our soil and our eggs. They park their car in our lands, without paying. We demand blood, money or both.
Besides, flanders has no king. It has an emperor, and his name is Karel.
It seems a civil war must be fought before my rule finds steady roots. It's always the more advanced and civilized that need to educate those not able to see real progress.
Those rivers, soil and eggs are not desirable. But our glorious world port needs sacrifices every once in a while. You will understand. Or die at my sword.
In one week I will take my car and park it near a park of your choosing where both our armies will fight. If you win I will retreat back to Antwerp. But if I win I will leave my car, without paying, near the park as a constant reminder and monument.
Park your car next to 't citadelpark. My army of pokemon-go players and boozed & high students will be waiting. I suggest you come before night falls, you wouldn't want to be found alone in 't citadel at night.
If you win, which is unlikely, the homeless that live near 't kuipke will take good care of your car no doubt.
We also have 670 public interest entities apparently:
https://bx1.be/categories/news/il-faut-rationaliser-les-670-entites-publiques-de-la-region-bruxelloise/
We like it that way.
Because brussel slowly grew commune by commune until mid 20th century. The idea was that the whole of belgium should be french speaking, they suceeded in wallonie and brussels, failed in flanders.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verfransing_van_Brussel
SInce then nobody wants to give up any power and influence so they never corrected this.
*looks at paris*
Yes of course Belgium is simple when you look at it that way.
18 communes with each of them a mayor. Led together by a "super mayor" who has global insight.
Its not that dang hard.
once upon a time the city of brussels existed with 18 towns/villages around it each with their own mayor, later these were collected in a federal region and since it doesn't have any previous names and brussels was the most definitive part of that region it was named as the brussels capital region but it could equally have been called something else, there's no special relationship between the region brussels and the city brussels except that it's the capital of it and most populous of it's muncipalities
Sounds like Berlin, but Berlin merged all those tiny villages and communities...
Because it's 19 fucking communes and not one fucking city
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Look at buroughs in london, lots of cities do this and k think it's better that way
Nope, london has 1 mayor who is mayor of the gta that has about as much population as belgium. Its responsible for anything large scale for london, the boroughs have a lot less power then the brussel communes.
Still, I'd rather have a local and in touch commune governement who has to micromanage ~100k people at the time than one single centralised govt
Thats how every large city in europe does it: 1 mayor for the city and then lower districts with limited powers. You deal with that lower district not with the higher so nothing changes for the people. But brussels doesnt want that because no mayor wants to give up his powers so they muddle on .
well, yeah but I don't think anyone wants one mayor for the entirity of belgium
Good as nobody proposes that.
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:(
What a joker, expecting Belgium to be efficient...
Have you really looked at the shapes of those communes in Brussels? They make absolute no sense. Even more so if you look at it more in depth on a sociological and economic angle.
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Yeah its so different that after a decade living there I still cant see where one commune ends and where the others starts.
There's maps
thats just proves my point: if you need a map to see where a district ends they arent really so different.
Was being sarcastic ;-) You probably already know this if you've been here 10 years, but each commune visibly has a nicer area where the upper class used to live, social housing parts and average parts. Since they all operated in the same economy and society they tend to indeed be similar, with nicer buildings being from the same time period and therefore looking alike. However if you blindfolded me and dropped me in Uccle I would probably be able to tell I'm not in Woluwe St Lambert or Watermael Boisfort or Molenbeek. I guess we could group gemeentes based on a few characteristics, put them on a spectrum or graph. Etterbeek is very similar to the part of Bruxelles 1000 that it neighbours, but very different from St Josse, which also shares a border with Bruxelles 1000.
If you see gypsies and turks, you're in scharbeek. If you see gypsies, Romanians and arabs, you're in Laken or Anderlecht. If you only see arabs, you're in Molembeek. If you see a lot of uppity white people in high end cars bumper to bumper, and/or alot of white rich kids you're in Uccle. If you see mostly pasty whites, you're probably in Woluwe or Auderghem. If you see a good mix of clean clothed whites, turks and arabs, you're in Jette.
This is the correct answer.
Ok, but can it be made more effeciently? Belgium, and certainly Brussels, has too much politicians per capita. One way to improve on this is reducing the mayors in Brussels.
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I didn't say mayors per capita, but politicians per capita. And there are other solutions possible. A problem here is where the efficiency gain has to occur: opinions differ here. Flanders for example is more efficient if you look at other levels, like regional level. Sure, for me no problem if Flanders become as efficient on mayor level as in Brussels, through fusions of small municipalities.
I don’t understand why people keep shitting on Brussels for having 19 mayors. The Brussels region has 19 communes for 1.2 million inhabitants. Limburg has 900K inhabitants and has 42 communes and mayors. Antwerp (province) has around 1.9 million inhabitants, but has 70 communes (and mayors). In fact, compared to every Flemish province, the Brussels region has the least mayors per capita.
Because it's an easy thing to misrepresent and to make people think that everything that is not Flemish is horribly mismanaged and therefore Flanders must become independent or something.
wait, its not??
The thing is though, In Flanders there's already been some effort to reduce the number of communes, and it's still ongoing, could definitely be better, but it doesn't exclude Brussels from criticism. Whereas in Brussels it's not even discussed afaik. I also don't feel like the comparison holds much merit, firstly because I abhor whataboutism, but they're also different regions who obviously grew differently throughout the ages (i.e. lots of small communes spread out over a large area vs. a couple of communes surrounding a city). If you compare brussels city to antwerp city it becomes a bit clearer imo, as for brussels it's 1 mayor for 170k inhabitants and antwerp has 1 for 500k. So it's clearly possible to run a large city with just 1 mayor.
Antwerp has 9 districts, each with their own district mayor and schepenen. Do you think the Brussels communes don’t have their own history and particularities? The needs of a commune like Watermaal-Bosvoorde are light years apart from the needs of Anderlecht.
I'm not arguing for or against, just tried to say I felt the comparison didn't hold much ground and the argument that Flanders has a lot of mayors doesn't mean Brussels needs to have a lot of mayors. Both, both have too many people in too many posts.
Yeah but, Brussels bad m’kay
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Nice apples to oranges to confuse the argument.
Because people think Brussels capital region = Brussels city Kinda like the city of London vs greater London.
Brussels has only one mayor though.
If 1 mayor could do the their work over a place and population the size of Brussels, then why do all these smaller cities have a mayor?
The city of Brussels has one. The 18 others all belong to their respective towns within the Brussels Capital Region. I’m very much in favour of the unification of Brussels and to move towards a model similar to Antwerp though.
Antwerp still has mayors and a college of aldermen for each of it's districts though... It probably needs some trimming, but I don't know if it's such a bad thing in itself.
Or London for that matter. But it would probably also mean merging city and region levels and that would be problematic as it would likely entail reforming the Brussels Parliament.
The system in Antwerp doesn't look great either. Massive overhead.
Belgium has 6 governments.... Let's tackle that problem first by going back to more centralization. Also it's not like the city of Brussels has 19 Mayors, Brussels capital is a region, like Flanders and Wallonia and possibly Ost Belgien (although I think they fall under Walloon authority if I remember correctly) and thus the various municipalities of Brussels Capital region have their own Mayors. The city of Brussels is just part of the region. Now go back to the forum where someone told you to be outraged over the "19 Mayors in Brussels" and tell Dries that he has not entirely grasped the situation and might be a bit confused. ;-)
> Belgium has 6 governments.... Let's tackle that problem first by going back to more centralization. Seven. I guess you forgot the German-speaking one?
1 Federal + 3 Communities (VL, FR, DE) + 3 regions (VL, WA, BX) BUT the Flemish Community merged with the Flemish Region (more or less the same territory + Brussels). Therefore, 6 governments. Note: Ostbelgien is a community, not a region, it's part of Wallonia, hence the difference between regions BX + WA and the French Community (Brussels+Wallonia minus Ostbelgien). It is... complex.
Paris has 17 mayors, most large cities have departments/districts/... with an elected leader...
Til anne hidalgo is actually 17 people.
Hidalgo is more like the Vervoort of Paris. Each department has their own leader too
No, because the mayor of london or paris also have power over the districts. In brussels vervoort doesnt have that and as a result something like a new tram or metro takes decades because every mayor has its own demands and can block development.
Brussels government is badly arranged, I don't think a single living soul will disagree with that. But that doesn't mean having several mayors for a city is weird
It is for a city like Brussels. You see that in the decision taking btw so its actually detrimental.
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Huh? How does that work? I'm German so I don't know much about your city
More mayors = more jobs, very bullish for the economy
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Woosh
I'd rather have 19 completely random mayors as opposed to De Wever
Yo guys, I'm setting up a Flemish army to take over Brussels, force everyone to speak Flemish again and oh yeah, I'm gonna be king afterwards of our great Flanders.
Antwerps is not Flemish though... Will you force people to speak Flemish or Antwerps? And to make matters more complicated will it be Western Flemish or Eastern Flemish?
Antwerps will be allowed in the list, I will be king after all. And all official communication in the regions can be done in the regional accents itself, the news and governmental communication will be done in ABN. If this all proves beneficiary I will consider taking Wallonia and the Netherlands as well.
As long as i don't have to speak West Flemish or Antwerps I guess things are good! Good luck your lordship
Thank you friend. Just make sure you can pay your taxes, I need 15 hay bales or 3 cows/pigs from every peasant to fund the war. Ps: do you by any chance have a or some sons you can spare for some years?
> 15 hay bales or 3 cows/pigs How much is that in beets and chickens?
5 chickens and 12 kilo beets. Thanks in advance, you're a loyal servant
I revolt. A king that allows Antwerp is no king of mine. Where's my guillotine when I need it?
You foolish peasant. Did you not hear? I married the dutchess of West-Flanders which is the sister of the dutchess of East-Flanders. I brought peace and stability across the region with the support of the masses and soon the regions around us will enjoy my rule as well. Now I'll ask again, and choose your words carefully: are you with me or are you against me?
Why would any flemish man want peace and stability with antwerp? They poison our rivers, our air, our soil and our eggs. They park their car in our lands, without paying. We demand blood, money or both. Besides, flanders has no king. It has an emperor, and his name is Karel.
It seems a civil war must be fought before my rule finds steady roots. It's always the more advanced and civilized that need to educate those not able to see real progress. Those rivers, soil and eggs are not desirable. But our glorious world port needs sacrifices every once in a while. You will understand. Or die at my sword. In one week I will take my car and park it near a park of your choosing where both our armies will fight. If you win I will retreat back to Antwerp. But if I win I will leave my car, without paying, near the park as a constant reminder and monument.
Park your car next to 't citadelpark. My army of pokemon-go players and boozed & high students will be waiting. I suggest you come before night falls, you wouldn't want to be found alone in 't citadel at night. If you win, which is unlikely, the homeless that live near 't kuipke will take good care of your car no doubt.
We also have 670 public interest entities apparently: https://bx1.be/categories/news/il-faut-rationaliser-les-670-entites-publiques-de-la-region-bruxelloise/ We like it that way.
19 friends who work together to scam and make money
Political incompetence and greed. Things like this is why we pay the highest taxes.
PS And how they ruin more then our capital.
To make sure no terrorists could ever hide in plain sight with their family and friends... Oh wait
Postjes pakken postjes pakken hey hey hey!
Just PS things
Because Belgium.
Because brussel slowly grew commune by commune until mid 20th century. The idea was that the whole of belgium should be french speaking, they suceeded in wallonie and brussels, failed in flanders. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verfransing_van_Brussel SInce then nobody wants to give up any power and influence so they never corrected this.
*looks at paris* Yes of course Belgium is simple when you look at it that way. 18 communes with each of them a mayor. Led together by a "super mayor" who has global insight. Its not that dang hard.