Brussels’ big makeover: green buildings, wider sidewalks and fewer parking spaces

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Brussels For many years, Brussels has lagged behind other European cities in terms of quality of life.

While Paris, Vienna and Barcelona have transformed their urban landscapes with new parks, sustainable housing schemes and green superblocks, Brussels has retained its gritty image of car-crowded streets and concrete public spaces.

But the city now hopes to shake off that image with a radical new urban plan called Good Life. Urban construction plans will make wider sidewalks, greener public spaces and sustainable architecture the norm in the Belgian capital, while banning demolitions and gradually cutting back on-street parking.

Brussels State Secretary for Urban Planning Ans Persoons, who is responsible for overseeing the plan, said in an interview with POLITICO that the plan will ensure “quality of life, quality of public space” [is] is the centerpiece of every project undertaken by the city. ”

But getting new rules approved won’t be easy.

The region’s left-leaning coalition government has less than six months left in office and needs to overcome multiple legislative hurdles to lock in “the good life” ahead of June elections.

There is also the risk of a serious backlash given that the plan touches on how people live in cities, move around and build new homes. Many residents, especially car users, remain angry about the government’s Good Move travel plan, which aims to ban cars from the city centre.

If approved on time, the new rules could heighten social tensions before people head to the polls.

Reconquer the city

Persoons said the Better Life plan aimed to completely rewrite the capital’s urban building regulations, which date back to 2007 and are “totally outdated”.

At that time, “Brussels had a very different demographic and we didn’t deal with things like epidemics or extreme heat, which we have to deal with today,” she explains.

One of the landmark proposals is to widen the width of sidewalks from 1.2 meters or less to at least 2 meters, creating space for more comfortable movement and making the city easier for people with disabilities and parents with prams.

The plan also addresses climate change with new minimum requirements for trees and green space: at least 5% of narrow streets must be reserved for greenery, while wider avenues must set aside at least 15% of their surface for vegetation.

The measures mean there will be less on-street parking space, a dramatic prospect in a city that has been rocked by violent protests over “active” plans to reduce traffic in the capital.

Despite the potential for backlash, Perssons said rethinking how roads and public spaces are used is a key part of the plan.

She said: “Protecting cities from the effects of heat and extreme weather requires planting more trees and having more green spaces to absorb rainwater, and rethinking urban movement “requires us to think not just about private cars but also about public transport, cycling cyclists and pedestrians.”

The secretary of state added that she had no intention of “waging a war on cars” but wanted to ensure “everyone has their space”.

New rules for new construction

The Better Life Project also aims to change Brussels home.

The plan would make it extremely difficult to demolish the building, a process that Perssons said would have “horrible environmental impacts and huge energy costs”. Instead, developers will have to find ways to renovate or retrofit existing structures.

New buildings must be designed to ensure that they can be converted from commercial to residential space when required. To take into account safety issues within the city, the ground floor of the building must have transparent windows on the street to ensure fewer blind spots.

The scheme requires new residential towers to have terraces of at least 2 square metres, with an additional 2 square meters required for each additional bedroom.

At the same time, the roofs of new buildings must provide more than just shelter: the spaces must help retain rainwater, house solar panels or serve as terraces.

While most of the new regulations target new construction, the plan would also streamline or eliminate the permitting process for existing homes altogether, with the goal of making energy-efficient retrofits less cumbersome. The city hopes the move will make it easier to meet upcoming EU rules aimed at drastically improving the energy efficiency of buildings.

The Brussels region is currently expected to approve the “Good Life” plan in June, but that process could be disrupted by Belgium’s Council of State, which is tasked with checking whether the new legislation has been drafted correctly.

Perssons acknowledged that if the agency found that the city did not conduct adequate public consultation, the plan would not be approved before the June election. It is unclear whether the next government in Brussels will move forward with the plan or shelve it.

“We hope to be successful,” Perssons said. “These changes are to meet new EU requirements, but they are also needed to strengthen our right to a good quality of life in our cities… Making cities greener, more inclusive and more accessible for everyone benefits us all.”