The local business fabric
Ghent has two centres of economic gravity that sit far apart. To the south runs the knowledge axis: Ghent University, the Ardoyen science park in Zwijnaarde and the biotech cluster around Tech Lane Ghent, full of spin-offs living on a funding round and needing a credible, English-language story online in a hurry. To the north, the Ghent canal zone stretches towards Terneuzen: steel, assembly, chemicals, cargo handling — a world of established family firms and subcontractors whose margin lives in order tracking and scheduling, not in a pretty homepage. Between them sits a third Ghent: the agencies, hospitality and retail of the centre and The Loop. A Ghent project therefore starts by working out which of those three logics you operate in.