The Canal Plan initiated by the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region is a response to the following objectives:
- to keep economic activity in the city, and to bring people’s workplaces and homes closer together;
- to create housing that meets the needs associated with population growth and is suited to the means of all household profiles;
- to create pleasant, unifying public spaces, promoting the Canal axis, the reopening of the Senne and the Canal crossings as links between neighbourhoods;
- to create the conditions for a city that is open (to different functions, to different populations, etc.) in an area characterised as one that receives the new populations of the Brussels Region.
Achieving these objectives involves:
- creating and promoting functional diversity by working on urban forms and programmes to ensure compatibility of functions;
- rationalising land occupancy and looking for ways to use it intensively;
- using public spaces as the basis for shaping the city.