Inspiration

Within the LIFE CityTRAQ project, we are working together on a future with clean air. The goal is clear: better air quality for our cities. For example, the city of Ghent will check the impact on the air quality of a school street o as well as evaluate the district mobility plans.

Within the LIFE CityTRAQ project, we are working together on a future with clean air. The goal is clear: better air quality for our cities. For example, the city of Ghent will check the impact on the air quality of a school street o as well as evaluate the district mobility plans.

Members of the Hovese environmental council went out with particulate matter sensors in the first months of 2024 to map local sources of air pollution. Much more than traffic, wood smoke stood out as a local source.

With the help of the European project COMPAIR, residents of the Vogelkeswijk in the city of Sint-Niklaas have been given a say in the evaluation of temporary traffic measures based on sensor data and by means of data cafés. This was prior to the development of garden streets in their neighbourhood.

The Municipality of Utrecht will ban the burning of wood in the home from 2030. From 2025, it will be forbidden to make a campfire outdoors or burn wood in a fire basket, for example. In this way, the municipality hopes to improve the air quality in the city.

How clean is the air we breathe every day? That's a question the partners in the LIFE CityTRAQ project are trying to answer. Using advanced air quality sensors, we measure what's normally invisible. Through a carefully designed approach, rigorous testing, and close collaboration with local authorities, we turn data into insights and make the invisible visible.

In January 2025, De Krekel primary school in Ghent welcomed a special new ‘pupil’: a robot at the school gate. QBOT was no ordinary robot, but a smart way to make children aware of air quality and sustainable mobility. The initiative is part of the LIFE CityTRAQ project, in which the City of Ghent is collaborating with VMM and IMEC.

On 18 June 2026 a broad group of policymakers, researchers, and cities gathered in Brussels for the closing conference of the European LIFE CityTRAQ project. After four years of collaboration, research, and pilot projects on urban air quality, it was time to take stock and look ahead.

The BelAir app shows the air quality at your location via a model calculation that is updated every hour.

Choose suppliers who use sustainable means of transport and who want to limit transport by, for example, not delivering during peak hours or by reducing the number of deliveries.

Green barriers are strips of vegetation along roads to shield walkers, cyclists and residents from the air pollution caused by road traffic. Green barriers can be small, such as hedges between a road and the pedestrian or bicycle path, or large, such as forest strips along highways.

By properly coordinating traffic lights, you improve traffic flow and at the same time limit traffic congestion, travel times and air pollution. This can be done with both static and dynamic control systems. The dynamic systems optimize the traffic flow based on real-time traffic information. They do require a more advanced check.

With street cleaning you remove dust residues from the road surface to prevent them from blowing into the air again. This so-called resuspension of coarse particles is the result of the turbulence caused by traffic or wind. Sweeping streets, spraying them with water or treating them with chemical pesticides reduce resuspension.

Local traders, companies, institutions, etc. can agree on how deliveries should be made to reduce emissions from freight transport and deliveries.

The Ecoscore gives an indication of the environmental friendliness of the vehicle.

Car sharing is a system whereby people rent a car for a short period of time, often after registration. This way you can limit the number of private cars and reduce the number of parking spaces. In addition, users are more likely to opt for active trips or public transport when they know they have a car available when needed. Shared cars are also used more efficiently than private cars. In this way, they can be replaced faster and the fleet remains up-to-date with the latest models, which usually have lower emissions.

Urban parks and forests are large green spaces in a city that improve air quality. They are part of the urban vegetation, which is the totality of parks and smaller green spaces in the city, which also includes green roofs and green walls (think of ivy walls, for example). The positive effect on air quality is based on the assumption that vegetation may purify the air by filtering out the pollutants.

Heavy vehicles such as trucks and buses often cause more pollution. The legislation in Flanders makes it possible to impose specific restrictions, such as for vehicles heavier than 3.5 tons.

With fewer or no parking spaces in the private or public space, you encourage travel without a car. This frees up space for bicycle sheds, play areas, meeting places or green areas.

An environmental zone (also called a low-emission zone or LEZ for short) is a zone or part of it in a city where certain vehicles with heavy emissions are not allowed to enter or to which access or parking is restricted. You can base an environmental zone on the age, class, weight or fuel of a vehicle, the size of the engine, the European emission category or the CO2 emissions.

More and more residents are concerned about the air quality in their area. They want to be able to measure it themselves and contribute to healthier air through actions. GGD Haaglanden (Municipal Health Service) guides them in this. Many lessons can be learned from the results of two such initiatives.

With speed limits you impose a fixed or variable lower maximum speed on traffic in order to reduce the emissions of traffic-related air pollutants.