The city that got serious about child-friendly urban planning

My last post on Antwerp showed how political priorities shape what is possible. That city’s ‘speelweefselplan’ or ‘play space web’ approach shone a light on how children get around their neighbourhoods. But in Antwerp, closing streets to traffic or losing parking spaces were steps too far for an administration fearful of being seen as ‘anti-car’.

So what happens when a city’s leadership faces up to the impact of traffic, and decides to do something serious about it? Ghent – Antwerp’s near neighbour and the second European city I visited on my Churchill Fellowship study tour last month – points to the answer. And the emerging results are impressive and revealing.