Tweet12-02-2010 om 15:20 by Sueli Brodin

“Know your readers,” I occasionally remind budding writers in my capacity as editor of Crossroads magazine, “give them the relevant background information and clearly define the message you want to get across.”

Isn’t this advice actually also valid for policymakers?

Last Sunday afternoon I attended a discussion meeting about the future of Maastricht and its region organised by the local Labour party. I was interested in hearing the three guest speakers, State Secretary for European Affairs Frans Timmermans, scenario planner Joop de Vries, and Maastricht Region Branding Foundation director Wim Ortjens, share their views on the topic.


Joop de Vries (left), Wim Ortjens (middle), Frans Timmermans (right)

As it turned out, and probably not surprisingly, the three men agreed on the general lines: Maastricht must urgently determine its assets and set out the course ahead; as a provincial capital, its future lies beyond its city limits and depends on a good collaboration with its neighbours. Ortjens compared the Maastricht Region to the city of Rotterdam in size and in population and pleaded for a better infrastructure in the region: “This will help people become comfortable with the idea of buying a house in location A, working in location B, shopping in location C, and recreating in location D.”

“Well, this is already the case for the international community living here,” I thought. Take for example the members of the International Women’s Club of South Limburg (IWC): we live within a wide perimeter encompassing Kerkrade, Roermond, Hasselt and Eijsden, and organise activities just as easily in Maastricht as in Liège, Hasselt, Brussels or Cologne, which are all close enough for a day trip.


Lunch with IWC friends from Japan and Israel in Maastricht

A comment by Maastricht city councillor and local Labour party leader Jacques Costongs however made me realise that not everyone sees urban and regional planners’ ambitions with a positive eye: “Many people in Maastricht say that the city is changing too fast and that they don’t recognise it anymore.” He added that this made them feel insecure, worry about the future and cling to the past.

I understood what he meant. A few years ago, I discovered how attached, physically tied even, some Limburgers feel to their direct, trusted environment when I heard a woman in my village describe her impending move to a newly built neighbourhood 300 metres further away as “een uitdaging”, a challenge. I remember looking at her, puzzled at her dramatic choice of word, but saw that she was not joking.

During a recent open day in a school in the nearby town of Valkenburg, the teacher who was guiding the tour explained that “children feel safer and more familiar here than in “de grote stad” (the big city) Maastricht.”


Open Day at school in Valkenburg

When I look at my daily routine, I see that my life takes place within a 2 km range around my house: I work at home, exercise at the local gym down the road, do my weekly grocery shopping in the adjacent town of Meerssen and can handle all of my children’s activities by bicycle: school, judo lessons, visiting friends. A neighbour woman told me that she didn’t go to Maastricht, only 6 km away, more than once or twice a year: “too crowded in the weekends, expensive parking.” Another neighbour, although born and raised here, has never visited Liège, “because of the language barrier.”

Yet, on the other hand, after every school holiday, my children come back home describing exciting adventures some of their schoolmates have lived in far away places such as Tanzania, Thailand or Canada. Even the children of the neighbour woman who seldom visits Maastricht spent two weeks last summer backpacking in Israel with a church youth group. A fellow spinner at the gym often tells me of his daughter’s intrepid holiday trips in California, Brazil, South Africa, or on the Trans-Siberian railway.


Birthday party

And what about my Limburg friend René, who speaks the Sittard dialect at home, but is also fluent in English, German and French and studies Hebrew and Japanese in his free time… René knows the best and most secret bicycles routes to Hasselt, Aachen, Aubel, Liège, Maaseik and Jülich and the most beautiful hiking trails through the Ardennes and Eifel forests.

So I ask myself: “Are these rare exceptions? What are the figures? Who are my fellow Limburgers?”

Even after living more than 15 years in the Maastricht Region and reading the regional paper every day, I still don’t have a clear answer to these questions. But they are important ones, because, to quote scenario planner Joop de Vries’ concluding words, “One thing is sure: we will get the city and the region we deserve.”

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