ABSTRACT
The value of green space for both growing and shrinking cities has become undeniable during the last decades. In growing cities, the preservation of green space against urban sprawl and densification is a crucial issue, while shrinking cities are making attempts to re-use derelict urban and industrial land as new green spaces to improve their liveability. It has been clear for some time that green space has a beneficial effect on the health and life of citizens, on social diversity and social interaction and on the image and attractiveness of cities. Another reason to create and preserve green space in and at the edges of cities is the new wave of (sub)urban expansion that is taking place. After successful urban renewal projects in the historic centres and nineteenth-century urban districts, the time has come to rediscover and reappraise the twentieth-century outer urban belt, and to connect the city centres with their suburbs to create valuable living environments for the future.1 Cities are getting increasingly dense and expensive, which is why the twentieth-century suburban districts will absorb a large share of any population growth. In Belgium, and more specifically Antwerp, this trend is very obvious, since recent research shows that Antwerp (which today has around 500,000 inhabitants) will have an extra 100,000 citizens by 2030, who will mostly be living in the twentieth-century suburban belt.2 In this context, transport, housing, but not least the importance of urban green space have recently been the topic of a fierce debate.
