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This study investigates the imaginary dimension of the creation of pedestrian areas in the centre of Brussels since the mid 20th century. Through an analysis of the different projections of the emerging slow mobility imaginary in its discursive and non-discursive forms, it focuses on the temporal and spatial dissonance arising between the field, the sensory experience and the image. Drawing on the examination of a corpus of films, the article stresses the role of the image in the gradual definition and emergence of a critical imaginary. The slow mobility imaginary emerges from different logics for reducing fast car mobility and accelerating slow mobilities, as can be perceived in the redevelopment of the Rue Marché-aux-Herbes as a ‘semi-pedestrian’ area: Taken together, these logics constitute a grammar of slowness that governs urban planning projects and ways of being by seeking to minimise or mask objects and behaviours seen as incongruous.