Are you saying Brussels didn't care because the problem went to a Flemish area? Almost unbelievable to hear about prejudice from a place like Brussels.
Usually problems like this are fixed because the people who vote for you complain. But Belgium, in spite of its small size, has a hypercomplex democratic system which is also fairly split between a "Flemish part" and "Walloon part" who will essentially battle each other.
Another example of the kind of political culture in Belgium: a big reason Belgium has a very high national debt is because in the interest of fairness both sides got treated equally in all things: "waffle-iron politics". What this meant in practice is that of side A got a new bridge somewhere because it was needed, side B also got a new bridge, whether one was really needed or not. This kind of waste occurs everywhere to some degree, but Belgium really perfected it to some kind of (expensive) performance art.
None of this is not a problem unique to Belgium, and occurs in international relations as well, or in the US between states at times. Politicians in Belgium however are too busy fighting on which language to use in Brussels and similar Very Important Issues™ so everything moves at glacial speeds :-/
Belgium is pretty provincial, but there is plenty of improvements in governing that the Brussels area can enact themselves...
A simple one would be to merge the 11 communities and not have a different police force govern each side of a main street. Another one would be to have an agreement on how to manage a tunnel that crossed multiple communities.
Brussels is _very_ Belgian. An utterly divided place but not necessarily undemocratic.
