In the documentary “The Angel of Doel” there is a fragment near the end where the elderly woman Emilienne Driesen is peeling shrimps, just like she would any other day. However, it is not like any other day and she is trying hard to hold back her tears. Emilienne is one of the last residents of the Flemish village named Doel that experiences the uncertain developments as the village lies in the middle of the port of Antwerp and is expected to make way for progress. At her kitchen table, we see how life in the village continues imperturbably. Eventually, when the priest in the village dies, her friends leave and everywhere around her buildings are being demolished, there is no other indication than that Emilienne too will have to let go of the village of Doel and leave.
Over time, Doel has become a tourist attraction and people coming there expect no one lives there anymore and that everything is deserted. This is a big misunderstanding; there are still some people who live in Doel, just like Emilienne did until she died a year ago. In this village, time is not the only
dimension of change. According to Doreen Massey, space is not a flat and dead surface you are travelling across, it is a myriad of stories going on. Just like in the village of Doel; at every point, you stop there will be a house with a story, events and a lot of memories. When you thus think of Doel, you think of a dead village. How could the ghost town become a living town again? One way of giving Doel a new purpose again could be to bring the past and future together in the same space. The idea of transforming Doel in a village that can serve as a home and working place for upcoming musicians and artists could be a new alternative for the ‘dead’ village. By offering a place to the performers of the future, Doel could be brought back to live again. In this way, there can be taken advantage of the disaster tourists that are visiting the village 50.000 times a year.
However, what would such an artist village look like? What rights do the original, displaced residents of Doel have? Should they be given the chance to return? Artists need a place to perform, work and live for a relatively cheap price, but so do the working class people that left the village last two
decades. How can Doel move beyond the apocalyptic tourism? Is there a future for sustainable tourism? Small coffee bars and pubs would allow the village to profit from tourism, and they could also act as a meeting place for the future residents of Doel – artists and others.
Lastly, how should we deal with Doel’s history? Do we forgive and forget, or do we learn and remember? Economic development policies can severely affect people as is illustrated by the displaced people of Doel. The effects – it could be argued – become even more painful when the plans do not live up to meet their expectations. Doel was to be removed from the map, and therefore the original residents had to move. Eventually, the plans for the port did not require the village to be demolished, but it was too late for the original residents. The recent history of Doel is an example of what we as planners and policymakers should try to avoid at all times: chaos.
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