“Let’s transform the functional city into a relational city”

Lhe sunny terrace welcomes friends over a coffee. Their laughter covers the muffled hubbub of passers-by. Children frolic and splash with the jets of water from the fountain under the attentive gaze of the parents, posted near the strollers. Seated in the background, a young couple waits for the jets to rise to the highest point to kiss. An old lady is walking her dog, which a neighbor strokes with one hand while holding her book with the other. Place Reine-Astrid in Jette, north of Brussels, is a successful public space. But one exception.

These moments of joy, these small shared pleasures, these gestures of mutual aid and mutual recognition remain rare in the heart of urban life. The overwhelming majority of common places are either too sterile or too hostile to accommodate our daily interactions. People pass by, but do not linger there. Or even take detours to avoid them. These spaces clearly bear witness to a form of absence, that of the ties that unite us. They just lack hospitality.

Their excessively mineral character largely contributes to the inability to welcome public spaces. This lack of benevolence towards the soil raises questions in these times of heat waves and floods. It is not nature that is hostile. But our default choice of minerality under our feet. By depriving ourselves of permeable soils, by delaying deasphalting, by giving up planting trees for lack of open ground or because of watering constraints, we are depriving ourselves of the benefits of their fertility, their freshness, their resilience.

streams of freshness

Let’s not sit idly by using the excuse that trees take too long to grow. Let’s opt for another scenario: let’s transform our streets into ” cool streams ». It is enough to take advantage of the existing canopies, of all these large trees already present on our avenues, our boulevards and our places still confiscated by parking. Let’s urgently return these canopies to those of us who need them most: pregnant women and children, the elderly and young athletes who want to stay in shape. And anyone who wants to get to their destination by bike or on foot.

Our cars don’t need the shade of trees to do well. We, yes. Climatic comfort is a fundamental right. A good as vital as water or electricity, to be supplied everywhere in town. Let’s give back the shade of our trees to humans. At the foot of our schools, our nursing homes, our supermarkets; around our parks, our homes, our offices; wherever there is shade, let us set out to reconquer it. Highlight the plant heritage already brings immediate well-being to populations. streams of freshness affect our ability to live together in a warming world.

havens of tranquility

Lyon was able to start this movement in 2012 with the conversion of hoppers of rue Garibaldi: the access roads to the underground tunnel previously dedicated to speeding have been filled in and converted into a very shaded urban boulevard. To the large alignment trees already existing on these 2.6 kilometers have been added many islands of smaller trees and shrubs. They help preserve biodiversity and provide havens of tranquility and coolness for pedestrians and cyclists.

The watering of these new thousands of square meters of planted surfaces is carried out at the same time as the cleaning of the streets. Both are provided by the old Lafayette hopper, which has not been filled in to become a rainwater recovery tank. A clever solution to transform the former functional city into a relational city.

Another avenue: to transform our good old, very often inhospitable, traffic light intersections into “living intersections”. The sharing of space is inequitable, the nuisances unbearable: too much noise, pollution, risk of collision with cars. Not enough free space or enough time to enter into a relationship.

On the strength of this observation, Basel, in Switzerland, decided to take up the question of the development of branch lines. Calmed at 30 or even 20 kilometers per hour, carefully revegetated and enlivened by vibrant facades, the crossroads Kannenfeldplatz, Wettsteinplatz and Tellplatz are no longer inhospitable road junctions but real squares capable of creating the city of proximity, by inscribing new ways of being together in the heart of the neighborhoods they unite.

Make room for children

Finally, we must transform the quality of our daily journeys by installing fun strips, play spaces that grow on the sidewalk or the roadway to allow children to move their bodies happily along the way. Perhaps the best way to pay our debt to future generations is to begin by making the world of the generation already born that is now learning to walk habitable. Making room for our children to once again be able to run free and play all over our cities, isn’t that the greatest mark of hospitality?

Pontevedra, Spain did. The sidewalks have been widened, the roads reduced, the speed has been limited everywhere to 30 kilometers per hour, the parking lot has been completely eliminated to save space for meetings, relaxation, play. It is possible to cross almost freely everywhere. Where there are still lights, these are always green for pedestrians. It is motorists who must press the push button to get the way clear. And the results are there: 80% of children in this city in northwestern Spain go to school on foot. All alone like grown-ups. If necessary, traders come to their aid. The city of children, they say, is good for their turnover.

Lyon, Basel, Pontevedra have already made their choice. What about other relational cities?