Launched in 2022, the BMA label seeks to highlight research topics and projects that have a spatial and social impact on the Brussels-Capital Region. The “Politique du lange” project led by Pauline Cabrit and Aurélien Ramos, winner of the first BMA label along with two other projects, focuses on the place of babies in urban public spaces, with the conviction that the city can and must be a source of stimulation, awakening and imagination for the youngest among us. Above all, it must do everything in its power to stop them from leaving!

Young parents are quietly but surely leaving urban centres. The birth of their first child is often the reason why households are moving away from Belgium’s major cities to suburban areas. Although the Brussels Region is the only one in which the natural balance remained positive in 2022, with nearly 15,000 newborns each year, the children born there do not stay. Indeed, since the 1990s, studies show that the 0-4 age group is the most affected by urban exodus. In Brussels, as geographer Sarah De Laet shows, this observation applies to the middle classes, but also to the working classes. According to the parents’ barometer published in 2015 by the Ligue des familles, nearly a quarter of Belgian households now live in peri-urban areas, in a country where nearly 97% of the population is urban.