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Overijse
is a spacious and green municipality southeast of
Brussels. The historic centre is built on the banks of the "IJse"
river, hence the name. The centre is surrounded by low density quarters with almost exclusively villa's in the built-up area.
Some of these quarters do have a historic nuclues, which consists
mainly of a couple of streets with rowhouses from earlier days.
And the inevitable church of course. Names of these sourrounding
centres are Jezus-Eik, Terlanen, Maleizen, Tombeek, and Eizer. |
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Increasingly Overijse is
the municipality of choice for the intenational crowd that regards this
community as a family oriented place with relatively cheap big sized
houses on a spacious plot, within easy reach of Brussels, and with a
lots of people just like them in the vicinity. Many of these new dwellers
are linked with European institutions or the organisations that
cater and cooperate for these institutions.
Many Flemish are rapidly moving out of the community estimating the
housing prices of Overijse as being too high. French speakers
from Brussels and Europeans taking advantage and moving in. To a
lesser extent as Tervuren, French speakers tend to buy the more modest
housing in the centre of Overijse as the internationals have sufficient
funds to acquire the villa's on attractive plots.
Prices here should be around 20 percent under those of Tervuren. Mainly
of the slightly less advantageous location of the municipality
towards Brussels and the less attractive morphology of the built-up
area.
One could expect in this community a political French speaking majority
within 15 to 20 years to come with all the tensions and political buzz
this will generate. It might have a serious negative impact on the real
estate market as well.
A majority of French speakers in general terms remains a long shot,
because of the influx of many but the political majority could be
won by French speakers due to the fact that most of the non-Belgians
tend not to participate in local elections of Belgian communities and
if they do participate they generally vote for French speaking parties.
The latter parties are much more agressively targeting and
incorporating immigrants within their ranks. While Dutch speaking
parties are entangled in inside fighting and busy handing
out contracts and jobs among themselves. The disastrous reputation that
Flemish parties do have with most foreigners as being racist and
adhering to an inward looking mentality isn't very helpful, to say the
least.
Dutch speakers in general might even held on to a majority since
Overijse is, with Tervuren, the place of choice for Dutch nationals
that settle in and around Brussels. |
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© 2008 Estaval
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