Meet Dender-Mark Park - Belgium's first Urban Quiet Park

In the middle of urbanised Flanders, lies a special place of peace and calm

On 29 October, the Dender-Mark Quiet Area celebrated its 20^th birthday and was also declared Belgium’s first Urban Quiet Park by Quiet Parks International. The latter is a non-profit organisation, dedicated to saving the ‘quiet’, meaning that they advocate for the creation of public spaces where mechanical noise is nearly non-existent.

The Dender-Mark Quiet Area is not just the first in Belgium, it is also one of the first in the world. The other Urban Quiet Parks include Hampstead Heath near London, Parc Del Montnegre y el Corridor near Barcelona and Yangmingshan National Park in Taiwan.

Quiet but not dead quiet

The Dender-Mark Quiet Area was created back in 2001 as a joint initiative between the municipalities of Galmaarden, Geraardsbergen and Ninove, the provinces of East Flanders and Flemish Brabant and the Flemish government. After they established the park south of Brussels between the rivers Dender and Mark, they launched Waerbeke - the organisation managing the green space.

Waerbeke, in their own right, took the idea of providing a quiet place for introspective tranquillity and ran with it. The park aims for an air of stillness, silence and pristine nature. It does not have to be dead quiet though. A quiet area needs to have a pleasant soundscape with mainly gentle natural sounds like water, leaves rustling, birds and etc. A very important point is that it must be void of mechanical sounds.

That is no easy task, considering that Flanders is one of the most urbanised areas in the world and home to the biggest cities in Belgium. But for 20 years now, Dender-Mark has been a quiet place. Dirk Sturtwagen, the director of Waerbeke, explained that the award invites people to come to the park and find a source of silence within themselves.

Gilke Pée of the Flemish Department of Environment explained that Flanders is in the heart of Europe and one of the least quiet regions on the continent. This is precisely why the local government wants to draw attention to the importance of sound quality.