The Champs-Élysées in the French capital is set to be given a €250m (£225m) green makeover, the mayor of Paris has announced. Anne Hidalgo, the city’s mayor, told French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche that the work would make the 1.9 km (1.2 miles) long road into “an extraordinary garden”. The Champs-Élysées committee has been campaigning for change since 2018 when they decided that something needed to be done to spruce up the famous avenue.
The changes are being designed by architect Philippe Chiambaretta of PCA-STREAM and include halving vehicle traffic and expanding sidewalks for pedestrians while creating “planted living rooms.” The 1.2-mile avenue is also an eight-lane highway used by an average of 3,000 vehicles per hour and is currently more polluted than the road that surrounds Paris, The Guardian pointed out. The new greenery is partly intended to improve air quality. Chiambaretta said the avenue had become a symptom of the problems with modern cities: “pollution, the place of the car, tourism and consumerism”, according to The Guardian. He said it needed to become more “ecological, desirable and inclusive.”
The major route was once dubbed the “the most beautiful avenue in the world” in France, but activists have complained in recent years that its allure has been damaged by noisy traffic and mass retail, making it an unattractive destination for Parisians. As part of plans to overhaul the city’s polluting thoroughfares to make greener spaces for pedestrians and cyclists, the greening will start with the car-clogged Place de la Concorde square, which is expected to be completed before the Paris Olympic Games in 2024. Afterwards, the Socialist mayor’s office plans to transform the whole avenue.
