Has the canopy scheme been cultivated to green urban spaces?

It was a well-contested issue during the last municipal elections. Fight the heat islands with the tree as a rival. Each candidate has started bidding, knowing who can and should …

Once elected, environmental scientist Jane Parsghian declared a climate emergency and during this process, during the city council at the end of August, put the canopy plan to a vote. Greening urban space in a plan that was adopted unanimously. The latter plans to plant 10,000 trees by 2030 to increase the Strasbourg canopy index, that is, the shade surface provided by tree foliage which should reach 30% by 2050. Eight months later, when the “planting season” has just ended, what are the conclusions that Can we draw from it? Is there always a consensus?

700 planned farms, nearly 1,000 completed

Since the beginning of the mandate, the shadows have hovered over the parachute plane. Expenditures are too high for summer and ephemeral plantations, and are a qualified event as symbolic by the opposition, but mayor Jane Parsigian justifies it by urging the creation of islands of freshness in most of the city’s mineral squares. Then a temporary budget for greening the city on the contrary is seen as too weak or too shy by the same elected members of the opposition …

A little rough, the parachute plan is finally released. If nearly all of the ephemeral plantation trees are replanted throughout the city in Saint Catherine, the farms have exceeded the hopes of the new municipal team. 700 trees cannot be planted, but nearly a thousand (966 to be exact) can be planted, compared to an average of 300 in previous years.

“Trees but in the gardens”

The result is more than encouraging, but not necessarily satisfactory. How about metallic squares and main squares in the city center? Whether it was Place Kléber, Place du Château, Place du Tribunal or Palais des Rohans, none of them had a chance to get one new tree. Does this herald a new ephemeral planting this summer?

First of all, in a letter he sent to the mayor last week, opposition municipal councilor (AGR) Pierre Jakubovic wonders about the site chosen for planting 966 trees. “I have planted dozens of trees in gardens that, as their name suggests, already have dozens,” he said sarcastically, before criticizing, citing two real estate projects in Neudorf, two projects that would “increase concrete and density” in Strasbourg.

Improvements are underway for Metal Squares

It reproaches that the city is sweeping with one hand even if I only manage to realize that the large places of the supercenter “have not yet been affected” by these terrestrial plantations. On the other hand, remember that 84 trees were planted in a very metal yard in the Hippodrome in the Rhine Harbor region, and many others in the station area, in the dairy sector, or even on November 22 Street.

In the coming year, citizen consultations will continue and school greening is intensifying. Twenty in this year 2021 will be affected … slowly, the parachute plan seems to be taking hold.