2023-12-07 11:33:58
Greening one of the most densified and urbanized cities. This is the enormous challenge facing Paris. The capital plans, within its new urban planning plan, to create some 300 new hectares of green spaces by 2040, in the style of London, which has more than 3,000. To get an idea of the challenge: between 2014 and 2020, only 10 hectares of gardens have been opened in the French city. Also we want to eliminate 40% of asphaltto not be a radiator city, but an oasis city, in the words of Ecological Transition Councilor Dan Lert.
These are some of the objectives of the ambitious local urban planning plan (PLU) of the French capital city council, directed by Anne Hidalgo. This project, which was voted on last week, just before the start of COP28, marks the roadmap on how build (therebuild) Paris to adapt to climate change and be a more livable and sustainable place.
Some speak of a new Hausmanian revolution, in reference to the French politician who, during the first empire, worked on the ambitious renovation of Paris. For this new challenge, the French capital looks in the mirror of London. The new green map of the capital has been devised by the Parisian urban planning atelier, and the idea is that the garden or tree-lined spaces do not have an accessory role, as they do now, but rather a main role, according to the deputy mayor, Emmanuel Grgoire. , when the project was presented.
But how to create these spaces in a city where there is no space? The first idea is the garden streets, as they have been called, which are pedestrianized roads where the asphalt will be replaced by vegetation. The other, more ambitious axis, involves locating potential spaces where larger wooded areas can be located. These points have not yet been revealed, but they may be places now unused, such as old factories or railway infrastructure. The idea is to plant 170,000 trees by 2026.
An example of the use of these enclaves to give air to the city is Martin Luther King Park, a 10-hectare enclave located in the north of Paris. It began to be conceived in 2002, it was inaugurated in 2020, and it is in an area that was previously used as a railway platform. In principle, it was going to host the Olympic city in the project for the Games that Paris presented in 2012, and which London won.
This summer, they are celebrated in the French city and the city council wants to take advantage of this historic event to promote its plan. At the moment, it is far from the goal of greening its soil. In 2020 there were only 647 kilometers that had green areas. The objective is that, in 2040, 40% of the road will be permeable and with vegetation. Permeable soils only represent 5% of Parisian public spaces and barely 2% of the total surface, despite the fact that they cool more and reduce pressure on the sanitation network as they filter rainwater.
In the capital, avenues that have few trees cause a heat island effect, so that, in summer, Temperatures can be up to 10 degrees higher than in other better-conditioned areas. In addition to waterproofing the city, the Parisian city council intends to open the green areas that already exist but are closed to the public: those in private areas, such as the gardens of private hotels, or those that belong to ministries. It is estimated that there are, in total, about 23.3 hectares.
Another objective is to expand bike lanes, so that the city can be traveled almost entirely by this sustainable means of transportation. Currently Paris has more than 1,000 kilometers of cycling areas, with about 350 kilometers of bike lanes.
Hyde Park, one of the lungs of London.World
The contrast to Paris is London, the city of a thousand parks. How many parks are there in London? he asked himself one day. Hunter Davies, the celebrated biographer of the Beatles, determined to explore the vast geography of his adopted city in London Parks. He made a list of spaces larger than eight hectares and came up with 370. Although the number of parks reaches a thousand, and the green areas are probably around 3,000 hectares.
Now that COP28 is talking about sponge cities, the clearest precedent is in London. The green carpet occupies around 60% of the urban spaceand it’s not just the parks, but also the 36 nature reserves, the 12 urban farms, the dozens of community gardens, the marshes and wetlands where the beavers water.
No large city can compare, hence London was distinguished in 2019 as the first National Park City in the world, an idea coined by National Geographic chief explorer Daniel Raven-Ellison. The parks are undoubtedly the greatest glory and trademark of London, attests Hunter Davies, who spent a year of full immersion to write his very personal guide to it.
In London there was never an urban plan like that of Barn Haussmann in Paris or the grid in New York. So the multicentric city was opening spaces between its 32 districts, including the Tottenham wetlands and the Hackeny marshes, the 36 completely wild nature reserves (a must-see, the Camley Street Natural Park, where St. Pancras) and 13 urban farms with sheep, horses and lamas visible as the overground passes by.
Oak and beech forests alternate with meadows in which Up to 650 species of wild plants growand with wetlands that provide shelter to 180 species of birds and a unique fauna, from the ubiquitous foxes to the muntjac deer, introduced to England from southeast Asia in the 19th century.
The green expansion continues to this day, with the opening of parks such as Beckhengham Place in Lewisham, in what was a very private golf course, or Northala Fields, emerged on the remains accumulated for the construction of Heathrow and Wembley Stadium in Ealing. , where beavers have just been reintroduced after 400 years, in one of the most celebrated rewilding projects.
Paris looks to London as a model that could serve not only to change a city, but to change the world.
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