Should you visit Antwerp later this year, you will undoubtedly be confronted with road works and the like, which results in traffic problems every now and then, but don’t forget that every cloud has a silver lining.

Our silver lining is that the road works in the Opera quarter and in the South quarter will teach us a lot about the town’s history, and not only that: parts of the city’s history that have lain hidden for hundreds of years will again become visible. One more reason to come and visit Antwerp.

The Antwerp Opera is built along  a city boulevard that in the sixteenth century was an enormous defensive wall. Recently Rough Guide chose Antwerp as its #5 city to visit in 2017, in the 16th century, an Italian named Guiccardini advised each and every European to visit Antwerp and its defensive wall. The people of Antwerp usually refer to this wall as the Spaanse Vesten (Spanish Walls) as the Netherlands then were part of the reign of Charles V and his son Filip II.

In the 19th century these walls no longer served a defensive role and in stead were a hindrance in the development of the city which was booming thanks to the newly (re)started harbour activities, so the walls were broken down. Fortunately they were only demolished up to ground level: the basements underground were left intact and archeological studies now are revealing these impressive works.

Source: Gazet van Antwerpen

Yesterday (Jan. 5 2017) the city authorities and the Flemish government announced Antwerp is going to be the first smart city in Flanders. In cooperation with IMEC, an organisation of IT-departments of Flemish univerities, the city of Antwerp is going to integrate smart sensors in hundreds of objects: waste baskets, sewers, delivery vans, traffic lights, …

Sensors in waste baskets can trigger messages to warn it is time to come and collect the waste. Sensors in the sewers can monitor the quality of rain water, which yields a lot of information about the quality of the environment in general, sensors in delivery vans can measure the quality of the air in the city, sensors combined with traffic lights deliver information which can be used to steer traffic flows in an optimal way, …

All the data collected allow for a more efficient organisation of city life and as the system is an open system anyone can use them to build his own apps.

Antwerp is the first city in Europe to host such a system, which in time will be rolled out in all Flemish cities, says Flemish Minister of Innovations Philippe Muyters.

Source: Gazet van Antwerpen