Overtourism in the city center

While the harmful impacts of the drifts linked to the excessive concentration of tourist activities in city centers are well documented and known, Brussels continues to bet on the exploitation of new attractive projects for visitors, to the detriment of the inhabited city. From the beer museum that has taken place in the Bourse, to the Chat museum under construction, this itinerary raises awareness of the consequences of the lack of regulation of the tourist function but also of the perverse effects of neighborhoods entirely dedicated to museums like our famous “Mont des Arts”: disappearance of classic housing, multiplication of horeca, decrease in commercial mix, and overexploitation of public spaces… And if there are places that crystallize all these problems, it is the galleries that we will cross on the way, from the Agora gallery to the Bortier gallery, without forgetting the Royales Saint-Hubert galleries suffering head-on from the “pralinization” of the city! Despite the political difficulty in reversing the trend, it is possible to trace another path to defend a city project that gives priority to the inhabitants, and this visit intends to offer you some avenues for action and alternative demands to counter overtourism without ever forgetting that the most pleasant cities to visit… are those that are alive and inhabited!