Doel is located next to the port of Antwerp and is great to combine with a city trip to Antwerp. Until the end of the sixties it was a lively industrial village with about 1,300 inhabitants. Now it feels mostly abandoned. The change started with the announcement of expansion plans for the port of Antwerp. At the end of the 1990s, it was decided that the port would be expanded with two new docks, one of which would run right through Doel. Eventually, it came to the point that residents could voluntarily sell their homes between 1999 and 2003. In 2003 there were only 214 inhabitants left. For a while squatters lived in the empty buildings, until they were all evicted in 2006. Now there are only 25 official residents left. The rest have been abandoned. In March 2022, an agreement was finally reached whereby the expansion of the port can continue without Doel having to disappear or become unlivable.