The snack bar does not have the best image, but it does have an important function as a meeting point for the neighbourhood

Snack bars do not have a good image among people who want to live a healthy life. As a distributor of greasy goods, they symbolize unhealthy living. Municipalities are trying to stop the proliferation, with limited results.

But Klasien Horstman, professor of philosophy of public health care at Maastricht University, and Mare Knibbe, assistant professor of philosophy of health sciences there, see things differently. They call for a different view of the chip shop.

Because not only are healthier alternatives appearing more often in the range of snack bars, for many people these types of businesses are one of the few affordable options to eat out. This makes them part of the increasingly scarce number of places where local residents can meet. Customers who do not disappear into their mobile phone or reading folder in the snack bar often talk to each other while waiting.

Horstman and Knibbe point out in their recently published book The healthy city. Exclusion and encounter in public space more often on the fact that it is all too easy to dismiss these kinds of occasions, during a bike ride through Maastricht-West. According to the two researchers, protesting against snack bars fits in with the attitude of ‘we know what’s good for you’, which they often see among authorities. Messages about health and related themes often go from top to bottom. Government and agencies send, residents are mainly receivers. Knibbe: “Health promotion should be approached less individualistically and more attention should be paid to quality of life and the environment.”

Because they would do better in post-war suburbs, the two researchers believe. “We are not concerned with criticism of the situation in Maastricht,” Horstman emphasizes. Knibbe and she have done most of the research there. They used to make rounds there. They even lived there for a while, about a year and a half, in 2014. To watch, talk and understand the neighborhoods.

Mall emptied

Neighborhoods like those in Maastricht-West with the associated impoverishment of recent decades can be found everywhere. Often they are designed and built with the best of intentions. In Maastricht-West, the spacious layout is striking. But a lot has changed in sixty or seventy years. Due to secularization, the parishes are no longer a binding factor. The shopping center in Malpertuis has slowly but surely emptied and is waiting for demolition and replacement – with an emphasis on housing. Libraries became library service points with limited opening hours. Sports facilities closed and were moved to the outskirts of the city. Health differences are now huge: up to six or seven years less life expectancy between the wealthy and less wealthy neighborhoods has been apparent for years from research. The difference in healthy years is even greater.

People often talk to each other while waiting in the snack bar

A few streets away, Horstman and Knibbe show the De Wiemerink community center. The high steel fence all around is not really inviting.

Horstman: “Everything is organized here, but everything at fixed hours and times. One club alternates with the other. They don’t see each other.” Spontaneous walking in has disappeared here. Everyone arrives just before their activity and immediately leaves afterwards. Knibbe: “At another community centre, every visitor has to pass a reception. There is no question of an inviting walk-in place.”

Greenery in and around the neighborhoods has grown considerably after many decades, sometimes that even means that it has grown over. Feelings of insecurity are lurking. Groups of youth are perceived as ‘loiterers or drug dealers’.

Snack bar in Maastricht.


Photo Chris Cologne

Patronized

The Viegenpark, an enormous, open plain, was created in the middle of Maastricht-West, partly through the demolition of quite outdated flats. It is not a place that invites to talk to each other and to be there, the researchers believe. The latest addition, a sandpit with a water pump surrounded by two seating areas carved out of tree trunks, should change that. Horstman is curious to see if it will work. “There is little shelter.”

There was a corner where residents can garden themselves, but immediately with regulations about whether or not planting is allowed. People felt patronized, may not come again. While more meeting would do the residents good, the researchers are convinced. Loneliness, anxiety and depression are common problems here.

Read also: How often do I get to hear: you’re not going to decide what I eat’

“Do you think it’s a vague story?” asks Horstman halfway through the tour through the neighborhoods. She is used to policymakers finding their anthropological analyzes (making contact, thinking along and helping, living there for a while) of the public space interesting, but still relying on ‘averages’ and ‘quantifiable indicators’ to justify their policy.

In most cases the intentions are good, Horstman thinks, but there is room for improvement. “More listening, more experience experts from within the neighborhoods next to experts from outside and, above all, less bureaucracy so that spontaneous initiatives are given more space.”

Horstman sees encouraging signs: “Maastricht has recently had a citizens’ budget in which residents can decide for themselves how to spend a small part of the municipal budgets. You could let that go over even larger amounts.” Seven years ago, the city also had a city-wide citizens’ summit with a hundred participants chosen by lottery, who spoke with each other and the municipality about their ideas and wishes for their neighbourhoods. And what came out of that? Horstman: “They chose meeting and liveliness as a priority.”

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