Paris has made dramatic progress to become Europe’s best city for children to walk, cycle and get around independently, according to a detailed ranking published today. The City of Light topped a table of 36 European cities thanks to its extensive but relatively new network of protected bicycle lanes, reduced speed limits and low or no traffic zones near schools. Read our full press release here.
This report fell somewhere between the news desks for transport, parenting, environment and urban affairs, making it unusually hard to sell. You could see that sub editors struggled with this too, and so simplified ‘child-friendly’ cities to simply bike-friendly. Despite this and really strong competing news, the report did quite well, gaining at least 255 articles around Europe and beyond. Editors at the Guardian placed the story quite prominently, as shown below. Unusually, I was joined in pitching by national partners, who did a great job in some countries, notably Italy, Portugal and Bulgaria. Also a bit of a challenge though, in terms of trying to ensure everyone launched at a similar time to maximise the news value. I tried to add a little extra news value by finding and sharing with journalists a really nice set of images taken for Paris city authority, the winning city. This included the great shot shown above, with credit due to Clement Dorval / Ville de Paris.
