Johanna Korndorfer: Ghent
A City Organised for the Wellbeing of People Rather than Cars
For my research of Ghent, my eyes sought the spaces and objects that describe wellbeing, community and sustainability as features naturally and inextricably linked. Ghent is an easy place to find these stories: it’s enterprising, friendly, and tackling sustainability goals such as a low carbon transport infrastructure with daring and flair for design.
The large city centre is car free and bicycle friendly, and the buses and trams that do access these areas are electric and fume-free. The impact this has on air quality is striking. The car free centre was implemented at the turn of this century, but only in recent years has expanded to include a wider area. I was told that the ban on cars met with initial opposition from parts of the public and business, but has since proven its success. No doubt a community feel has a better chance of thriving when cars don’t dominate the cityscape.
Even where cars are still allowed on Ghent’s streets, their power is kept in check; sides of the road aren’t simply given over for parking either. See ‘The Innovative Way Ghent Removed Cars from the City’ to watch a short film about the initiative.
Fun is part of wellbeing and sustainability, and design plays its part. There is a sense of humour and play with the public furniture on which to meet and chat. Sides of the streets are reclaimed for human connection.
Further outside the pedestrianised city centre is this large square. Underneath – and hidden away – is a vast carpark. There are also new waterways opened within the city which were once carparks.
It was sad to return to the smell and unhealthy fumes of England’s antiquated infrastructure of diesel trains and buses. We urgently need a vision for our city’s public transport and cycle systems. Within the research group that travelled to Ghent, we chatted about Exeter’s old tram lines buried under the existing asphalt. Could they ever be resurrected? We also proposed a Car Free Exeter Day, imagining the Exe Bridges roundabout closed to cars but welcoming to pedestrians, cyclists and mobility scooters. We discussed how the absence of cars would provide the opportunity to look at and feel the city in a different way; to hold events within the ruined walls of Roman Exeter blighted by the swarm of traffic; to experience how the air smells on this normally choked junction of roads; and to monitor the air quality before, during and after the event. A first action towards a greener, forward-thinking future for transport infrastructure in our city.
Food in the City
In the residential area where I was staying, there were green bins available on the streets. Composting is part of Ghent’s recycling scheme and part of an overall food policy scheme called Gent en Garde. Its five strategic goals are:
1. A shorter, more visible food chain
2. More sustainable food production and consumption
3. The creation of more social added value for food initiatives
4. Reduce food waste
5. Optimum reuse of food waste as raw materials
The project is innovative and collaborative, as it looks for solutions on tackling different food-related issues within the city through the involvement of all its citizens and civic infrastructure. A comprehensive overview of the aims of Gent en Garde can be found here.
In spring 2017, I coordinated a ‘10 Mile Community Feast’ for Transition Exeter in Belmont Park, Exeter. The idea was to invite the local community to participate in a Jacob’s Join with dishes they prepared with ingredients accessed from within a 10-mile radius of the city. This was to highlight the sustainability of using locally grown food. For me, the project opened up many questions with regard to our systems of food production, distribution (including access) and waste. These systems hold influence on well-being, resilience, health and culture within a city and the opportunities we have for mitigating their effects on climate change. Food miles is just one part.
Gent en Garde posits the idea of a partnership-based, and community engagement approach that tackles the dysfunction within food production, consumption, and waste’s unperceived value and management, in order to form a more joined-up city food culture. Some ideas included piloting the raising of pigs and chickens in the city to feed on food waste; systems to distribute food surpluses to community groups; and a ‘Thursday Veggie Day’. With regard to the latter, the report states that if all the residents took up the initiative, the city would reduce its CO2 impact, equalling 19,300 fewer cars on the road.
Many of these ideas are seeding and growing in Exeter through various community initiatives. But it would be interesting to see how we can organically interconnect them into a strategic vision that translates into actual steps towards authentic cultural and operational change. A new collaborative form that embraces the principles of sustainability, wellbeing, community, biodiversity and fair trade. From the Gent en Garde policy paper: ‘A well-thought-out policy also requires a broad support base, with participants feeling they are considered as co-owners. All relevant stakeholders need to be involved, from the inhabitants of the city as citizens and consumers to associations, traders and companies, municipal services, producers, etc.’
With the advent of compost recycling in Exeter next year, there are opportunities to explore its role within our food systems and within the cycle of city life where waste is a benefit to carbon capture, healthier soils and, in turn, biodiversity. One project to connect with composting could be Flow: A River Orchard on the Exe.
Wellbeing and Housing
I came upon this park called Ferdinand Lousbergsparks. Despite the grey cold morning, it felt as though the primary school was held in the heart of a community space. The outside of its curved façade does not include a fortress of fencing and a locked gate broadcasting fear of ‘stranger danger’. The park’s design was undertaken in consultation with the community and includes ‘dunes’ as wild space, cosy spaces, an orchard and a long communal table. There are two sandpits for the dogs to poop in. Not sure how successful it is, but nice to think that lying on the grass in summer isn’t a space shared as a dog toilet. For more information about this lovely green space within a densely built up residential area, see here.
Ferdinand Lousbergsparks
With 70,000 students making up 20% of the population, Ghent has optimism and youthful vigour. It has a civic pride that combines respect for modernity and heritage. Examples include its ambitious, new, purpose-built, state-of-the-art library along the canal, and its huge multi-storey arts centre housed in a spectacular turn of the 20th century building. If I had to pick a few words to sum up its evolving culture of sustainability, it would be: co-creation; taking chances; humour; integration of old and new through good design; and joined-up thinking.