Lille promotes sustainable urban mobility from a young age

The French Metropolis of Lille recently published a guide for children aged 6 to 10 years old to engage these youngsters in safe and sustainable mobility matters. The guide strives to raise awareness of eco-mobility and road safety by allowing children to engage with essential mobility matters in a fun and educational format, with the help of challenges, games, crafts and rhymes.

Children can learn about safety when travelling from home to school and explore different, more active and eco-friendly modes of travel. The booklet proposes four main types of pedagogical and fun activities for teachers to engage students on mobility issues, such as:

• School mapping: To help children reflect on their journeys between home and school by identifying the iconic places in their neighbourhood, by locating dangerous spots and crossings and by calculating their journey time.
• Discussion kit: Containing paper origami and cards to assist teachers with engaging children and helping to foster discussions.
• Mobilfestation: Incentivising students to come up with rhymes related to themes relating to eco-mobility.
• Eco-mobility challenge: Developed as a team challenge to enhance engagement, while being entertaining, with teams challenged to explore alternative modes of travel for a week.

The action responds to increasing concerns for children’s safety when navigating in European cities and aims to engage this segment of the population in urban mobility and sustainability issues.

The publication of this guide follows in the footsteps of the city’s effort to enhance the accessibility, safety and sustainability of its urban mobility offering. During the first COVID-19 lockdown, the French metropolitan area installed 32km of temporary bicycle lanes and secure bike parking stations, as well as limiting vehicle speeds to ensure cyclists’ safety.

Article first published first at POLIS Network on 1 February 2021