Ghent April 2012-2.jpg

Ghent is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province and after Antwerp the largest municipality of Belgium. It is a port and university city. W

Initiatives by topic

Cycling activism

Ghent has the largest designated cyclist area in Europe, with nearly nearly 400 kilometres (250 mi) of cycle paths and more than 700 one-way streets, where bikes are allowed to go against the traffic. It also boasts Belgium’s first cycle street, where cars are considered ‘guests’ and must stay behind cyclists. W

Food

The city promotes a meat-free day on Thursdays called Donderdag Veggiedag with vegetarian food being promoted in public canteens for civil servants and elected councillors, in all city funded schools, and promotion of vegetarian eating options in town (through the distribution of "veggie street maps"). This campaign is linked to the recognition of the detrimental environmental effects of meat production, which the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has established to represent nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Ghent has the world's largest number of vegetarian restaurants per capita. W

Sustainable transport activism

Wikipedia: Trams in Ghent

Urban sustainability

Living Street project

News and comment

2017

Ghent's Quick Rise as a Sustainable, Commons-Based Sharing City, Aug 9 [1]

2016

Car-free Belgium: why can't Brussels match Ghent's pedestrianised vision? Nov 28 [2]

2009

Belgian city of Ghent is about to become the first in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week, [3] May 12

Resources

Commons

A renewable energy cooperative, a community land trust, and a former church building publicly-controlled and used by nearby residents — these are just a few examples of about 500 urban commons projects that are thriving in the Flemish city of Ghent in Belgium. A new research report (in Dutch) shows that within the last 10 years, the city has seen a ten-fold increase in local commons initiatives. The report defines commons as any "shared resource, which is co-owned or co-governed by a community of users and stakeholders, under the rules and norms of that community."

With a population of less than 250,000, Ghent is sizably smaller than the other, more well-known Sharing Cities such as Seoul and Barcelona. But this report shows how it is quickly becoming a hub of some of the most innovative urban commons projects that exist today.

The study was commissioned and financed by Ghent city officials who were keen to understand how they could support more commons-based initiatives in the future. It was conducted over a three-month period in the spring of 2017. The research for the report was led by the P2P Foundation's Michel Bauwens, in collaboration with Yurek Onzia and Vasilis Niaros, and in partnership with Evi Swinnen and Timelab.

Given how self-governance is central to the success of a commons, the primary methodology employed by the researchers was to meet and talk with the members of various projects. Additionally, they conducted a series of surveys, workshops, and interviews with Ghent residents to explore how these projects came about and what could be done to encourage more commons initiatives to emerge. One result of this process is an online wiki that maps hundreds of successful such projects in the region.

These are a few notable projects mentioned in the report that embody the type of commons work currently underway in Ghent [4]: see Initiatives by topic

See also

Interwiki links

Wikipedia: Ghent

External links


References

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