Environmental quality of life in Flanders

Meet Mee Mechelen

Flanders, the Northern region of Belgium, is one of the most urbanized in the world, with a population density close to 500 inhabitants/km². This leads to pressure on the environmental quality. Citizen observatory Meet Mee Mechelen aims to improve the dialogue between citizens and decision makers by creating a platform where they can share information on the local living environment, specifically on air quality and noise. With such a platform, local problems can be signalled, better monitored, put on the political agenda and improved.

Meet Mee Mechelen’s mission is to become an online and offline meeting place where stakeholders gather and build data, information and knowledge about air quality and ambient noise and make it accessible for everyone, to support policy making and initiatives for a better living environment. The citizen observatory envisions a city in which all stakeholders cooperate in a sustainable and constructive manner to keep on improving the air quality and the soundscape.

For updates on this citizen observatory, visit the Meet Mee Mechelen online platform and follow it on Twitter and Facebook.

KlimaatRobuust St. Andries

After the successful establishment of Meet Mee Mechelen, the shift in focus on only one city changed to a regional focus by assisting in the set up of a citizen observatory in Antwerp. The district Sint-Andries in Antwerp had a long history on participatory processes around making the district climate resilient. They were very interested to communicate on a sustainable way with different stakeholders within the district in order to develop measures to make the district climate resilient through nature based solutions. The citizen observatory KlimaatRobuust St-Andries was created with a focus on heatstress.

KlimaatRobuust St-Andries’ mission is to be a physical and online meeting place where citizens, policy makers and scientists gather information and knowledge about heat stress , make this accessible for everyone and actively spread the information in order to influence the policy agenda and start and maintain initiatives to reduce heat stress. The first initiatives were heat measuring campaigns in the summer of 2018 and 2019 and the mapping of cool indoor and outdoor places were people sensitive to heat are able to go to cool down during heat events.

For updates on this citizen observatory, visit the Stadslab2050 online platform. Stadslab2050 is a project of the City of Antwerpen, and is a member in the citizen observatory.

Share this article