My Life on this planet.

Economies are restarting, a necessity Societies are slowly restarting their country, including opening borders so people can travel again. In Belgium shops opened while schools for some students restarted. People can also restart non contact sports. But, we're also reminded to continue to keep a distance from others and to continue washing our hands regularly.  Unfortunately, for many people this restart comes too late as the economy plummeted worldwide and companies need to fire people or close completely when they couldn't survive two months of inactivity. And, although many people acknowledge this lockdown was necessary, up to 25% of businesses say they won't survive a second lockdown; I also think " Mr Doom " is more realistic when he says that the recovery will be much slower than the IMF thinks it will. And yet, bars and restaurants still can't reopen in Belgium while also tourism that includes travel agencies, airline companies, hotels and others suffe...

In Belgium, since many years people discuss how to reduce or even solve the standstill of the traffic, certainly within major cities and on highways that connect cities and towns as here traffic sometimes comes to a standstill while it is expected that the number of cars will further grow in future. Some politicians think one of the solutions is building shopping malls just outside towns and cities so traffic doesn't need to enter them. However, this means people from within and outside cities and towns need to travel to those shopping malls and this will also cause traffic problems as people will probably use their car since people travelling to those shopping malls often buy plenty or they would buy it in their local shop. In addition, I agree with those who claim that these shopping malls may damage local economies inside cities and towns as people who buy in these malls will probably not visit the city centre to buy, drink or eat something, certainly not if they came by ca...

This article is to demonstrate how I think a street can be re-organised without a large cost or major works while it will improve the safety of pedestrians but also result in a space where people can rest and children can play while it may even improve traffic. How I came to this? Simply by walking the street and experiencing first hand why so few people use the middle part of a street although it is intended as a save walking area. Figure 1 - Situation of area as can be found on Google Maps I will describe the Stalingradlaan / Avenue de Stalingrad in Brussels (most streets have two names in Brussels, i.e. in Dutch and French while foreigners often pronounce the names in something that sounds like English and thus it is not always easy to understand). Figure 1 shows how the street looks like on Google Maps. I like this street. Indeed, on both sides there are beautiful buildings such as the Zuidpaleis / Palais du Midi (indeed, even houses have two names) that is a large impre...