Even residents of Leuven are now finding it hard to imagine what Martelarenlaan in Kessel-Lo looked like until recently. After the Second World War, this link along the railway line between the main roads to Diest and Tienen degenerated into an urban motorway, despite the dense population. Of the ‘belle vue’ over Leuven, on the other side of the ‘iron river’, nothing remained but a cluttered car park. The avenue thus marked the divide between the city and the suburbs. The new Park Belle-Vue, designed by H+N+S, Artgineering and Ara, with its impressive view of the tracks and the city, changes that completely. It is both a meeting place for the neighbourhood and a hub in a network of cycle and walking paths.

The park is the crowning glory of the redevelopment of the Leuven station area. This began in the late 1990s with an urban design by Marcel Smets’s team. On the Leuven side, an esplanade flanked by offices was created between the station and the Provincial Government Building. The station was given not only a new canopy but also a new underpass and a footbridge over the tracks. On the Kessel-Lo side, these led to a lower and an upper square adjacent to a building complex that gave Kessel-Lo a ‘head’. The railway line thus transformed from a barrier into a link between the city and the suburbs.