See Ghent’s Tremendous Quality of Life In All Its Streefilms Glory

Ghent Kicked Out the Cars So You Can Walk, Bike, Live & Thrive in the City

So I’ve published the 1,111th Streetfilm and it’s a revisit to Ghent to see the wonderful city in all its glory while the 2024 Velo-City Conference was going on.

It features a dozen interviews and soundbites from many of the tour leaders and smartest folks working in transportation and urbanism. That includes Vice Mayor Filip Watteeuw, author Melissa Bruntlett, Doug Gordon from the "War on Cars", Sam Balto who has made the Bike Bus so famous and my video-production-brother-contemporary Bicycle Dutch's Mark Wagenbuur - and that is just for starters. Enjoy!

Ghent's Political & Media Obstacles to Implementing the Traffic Circulation Plan

There’s been an early flurry of questions and comments asking about the public’s initial reaction to Ghent’s implementation of their 2017 Traffic Circulation Plan. Luckily, I helmed a shorter film back in 2019 (above) investigating just that. Predictably, the run up was filled with meia sensationalism and many elected supporters were bombarded with criticism & threats. But as often happens once the changes happened, it was mostly embraced.

The Ghent Velo-City 2024 Bike Parade

I got to make my updated Ghent Streetfilm (with a bigger focus on bicycling) due to the 2024 Velo-City Conference being hosted by Ghent. One of the attractions was a celebratory bike parade party that occurs at the annual conference. check out the fantabulous ride in full pomp & spectacle.

Ghent: Getting to School By Bike

The Velo-City 2024 gathering featured technical tours to see Ghent’s School Streets in action. We got to see multiple treatments that hopefully inspire your city to do the same! My opus features a taste but here’s a full in-depth explanation with more detail. If looking to get school streets started in your city, this is the link to utilize and share.

The Innovative Way Ghent, Belgium Removed Cars From The City

Here is the original visit back in 2019, undertaken at the urgency of Canadian urban planner Brent Torderian who convinced me there was a tremendous story to tell. Witness the transformation of Ghent, Belgium, which instituted the Traffic Circulation Plan in April 2017, it completely changed the way nearly every resident gets around the city and has inspired unheard of mode shifts. It encourages less car use, more bicycling and more transit use by splitting the city into seven distinct zones: a mostly car-free city center core surrounded by six zones which have been cordoned off with concrete or controlled by cameras.

The only way to reach them is to travel to the ring road on the city outskirts, thus making it not impossible to use a car but motivates those shorter trips to be done via human power or mass transit. Bike mode share in 2012 was 22%, now it is 35% and growing!