The Duivenplein, the San Marco of the garden city?

When you stand in the middle of the Duivenplein, opposite the Rozenstraat, you are convinced that the name 'square' is grossly exaggerated. Today, the square paved with concrete bricks, the numerous garages is more like standing in the parking lot of a supermarket. Unimaginative and boring. Public green spaces are hard to find. It's clearly a missed opportunity to turn it into an intimate place.

However, the name would suggest that a square was indeed in mind. Pigeons and squares form an ancient combination. And if you know that there were many pigeon fanciers living in the district, then the forefathers had something else in mind with the naming than what can be seen now.

Particularly interesting is the confrontation with a hierarchy of roads. This was important in a garden city. On the one hand, it was intended to reduce costs. The narrower the road, the lower the cost. On the other hand, they channelled the 'traffic' according to a human scale. After all, you have to imagine that at the time there was still an idea that everyone would drive a car 60 years later. Hence the larger axes such as Dahliastraat and Begoniastraat, which organised traffic from Sint-Elisabethlaan. Smaller streets such as the Rozenstraat connected to it, wide enough to pass with a pushcart. Finally, there were the roads that ran between the houses. You could get through it with a wheelbarrow. These smaller roads between the houses were originally part of the garden city concept: it simulated a rural environment and was intended in such a way that the neighbours could have contact with each other. Not to stimulate this contact, because that was there anyway at the time. Today, the garden city gives a rather closed feeling where the residents guarantee their privacy through man-sized fences. The purpose and idyllic aspect of these neighborhood roads has been completely lost. Those who still use them probably only do so in daylight.

Jan Rymenams