On est venus ici pour la vue

Adjacent to the Biestebroeck basin in Anderlecht, the Aurore district is a rather unique piece of Brussels. Before its dynamics were forever transformed by the Canal Plan, young photographers Tom Lyon and Pauline Vanden Neste went to meet its inhabitants.

Brussels, a city of perpetual construction sites, has never ceased to metamorphose according to vast political and urbanistic projects with their share of utopias. Among these: the ambitious Canal Plan drawn up in 2012 and its promises of new housing, conviviality and revitalization of the neighborhoods bordering the artificial waterway that runs through the city.

“The canal zone is undergoing tremendous upheaval. It’s being felt even by us who live our lives as small art students” says Pauline Vanden Neste, 25. “This is the area where we go to party. This is where artist studios are blooming, where real estate projects are sprouting up, with the gentrification that brings.”