The mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet on September 1, 2020 at the start of the school year.

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E. Frisullo / 20 Minutes

  • For his first return to school, the new mayor of Lyon presented the main lines of his program for schools.

    A resolutely green action plan.

  • Among them, the pedestrianization of the vicinity of schools has started and the revegetation of playgrounds should follow in the coming months.

Streets blocked for motorists but free for schoolchildren.

For his first school year as mayor of Lyon, the ecologist Grégory Doucet has started to deploy some of his measures for the schools promised during the Municipal campaign.

“We are talking a lot about the health crisis and the Covid in this fall.

But I would not want us to forget that today is a new school year, ”said the mayor, anxious to engage the city in a new era.

"I want to make Lyon the city of children, that is to say a city designed at child height, a city designed so that they can flourish there", added Grégory Doucet, welcomed Tuesday morning for the start of the school year at Combe Blanche, in the 8th arrondissement.

It is for this purpose that in recent days, removable barriers have flourished around certain school groups, now prohibiting traffic on several axes, to the surprise of motorists.

“We wanted to show what a first step of pedestrianization could look like,” said the mayor of Lyon.

This is particularly the case at the Doisneau school in the 1st district or near the Gilbert Dru school group in the 7th arrondissement.

"These urgent works are aimed at appeasing the city, reclaiming public space and responding to longer-term environmental and climatic challenges", specifies the municipality, whose environmental program for schools obviously does not stop the.

🤸‍♀️ Present alongside @FannyDubot to inaugurate the first children's street in # Lyon7.



From the start of the school year, the surroundings of 12 schools were pedestrianized to make children's routes safer and allow them to reclaim public space. # Lyon # rentreescolaire2020 pic.twitter.com/ZWCRSpJpTH

- Valentin Lungenstrass (@vlungenstrass) September 1, 2020

Breaking asphalt in playgrounds

Throughout the mandate, the surroundings of 206 schools in the city must be pedestrianized.

And the courtyards of schools will be vegetated in order to create shaded and cool areas, so much sought after during heat waves.

About twenty schools should benefit from it this year.

“Trees will be planted there in the fall and this winter,” explains Grégory Doucet.

In many cases, this will involve breaking up bitumen to green.

For this first phase, priority was given to establishments, known to be the most exposed to the heat in summer, very little vegetated and for which renovation work was already planned.

This list will be supported over the years by the municipality, which also plans to equip the courses with water games and foggers.

Non-gendered lessons

Like what is already done in Rennes or Grenoble, gender-neutral courses are also being studied as part of this revegetation work.

"We are going to work on the occupation of space by children by relying on experiments carried out in schools", details the education assistant, Stéphanie Leger, anxious to create places allowing a mixture of girls and boys.

The stated objective is simple.

"It is a question of seeing how to organize the space so that it is no longer occupied in the center by the boys playing ball with, around the court, the girls who discuss, and tend towards activities for all and a equal occupation of the place, ”adds the assistant.

These developments, such as pedestrianization, must be subject to financial costing by the town hall in the coming weeks.

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  • Lyon

  • Gregory Doucet

  • ecology

  • Education

  • public school

  • Society

  • Back to school