The mayor of Bordeaux Pierre Hurmic, during the presentation of the city's Nature plan, November 25, 2020. -
Mickaël Bosredon / 20 Minutes
To "change the extremely mineral image of the city of Bordeaux", Pierre Hurmic will not hesitate to "break the bitumen even if it means removing parking spaces".
The new green majority also wants to create urban micro-forests.
Regarding the greening of strategic places like Pey-Berland, the matter is more complicated and should take a little time.
A strategy of "plant conquest of the city".
The mayor of Bordeaux Pierre Hurmic, and his deputy for nature Didier Jeanjean, announced on Wednesday the launch of the “Bordeaux Grandeur Nature” initiative of the new ecological majority.
The goal?
"Changing the extremely mineral image of the city of Bordeaux" says Pierre Hurmic.
And for that, “we must accept that planting a tree is to the detriment of other uses of the roadway.
"
The mayor of Bordeaux is not afraid of "appearing unpopular" to carry out his ambition.
Thus, he insists that it is necessary to "demineralize", "to break the bitumen even if it means removing parking spaces.
"He considers" that the imperative of having a tree in front of your home is much more important than being able to systematically park your car in front of your front door.
"Asked about the reactions that this new outing risks provoking, Pierre Hurmic is not dismantled:" The residents and residents are much less attached to the car than some elected officials.
"
Small tackle from behind at Juppé
If he aims his current opposition, he also scratches his predecessor Alain Juppé.
“The tree is not street furniture that one day you plant and the other you uproot, that you cut up on the pretext that it hides an 18th century facade… You see what I'm referring to.
“In 2018, under the Juppé era, Pierre Hurmic was in fact chained, with other activists, to the chestnut trees of Place Gambetta before they were slaughtered as part of the redevelopment of the place.
Behind the little sentences, the ecological mayor and his deputy also unfolded their projects.
"This is not a Prévert-style inventory consisting in saying that we are going to plant ten trees here and twenty-five there," he warns.
Our strategy is based on four axes.
We must first protect, because trees are natural heritage, and Bordeaux is not just architectural heritage.
We must also renew, we must plant and we must participate, that is to say that we will only succeed in this plan with the Bordelais.
"
No real estate program on the Jallère
The objective is in particular to make fallow areas safe and to revise major urbanization projects to limit the artificialization of soils.
Didier Jeanjean announces in this regard that “the 45 hectares of La Jallère are now sanctuary, and there is no longer any real estate program there.
On the Bastide-Niel ZAC we have succeeded in reducing permeable spaces from 5 ha to 9 ha.
"
Without giving a figure, the new majority ensures that it will plant more.
Trees, but not only;
it is also a matter of greening the streets, along schools, in front of houses… It will also create five mini-forests.
"A microforest is a very dense forest with several species, which stimulate each other to grow with each other," explains Pierre Hurmic.
It was the Japanese Akira Miyawaki who invented this concept.
We consider that these are phenomenal CO2 sensors, and we can lower the ambient temperature by one degree in a radius of 100 meters, which is already not bad.
The more urban microforests there are, the fewer air conditioners there will be.
The first will see the light of day on the Billaudel plot.
"Not gadgets"
“Making our city more green is essential,” comments the opposition group Bordeaux Ensemble (LREM).
However, there is a lack of larger-scale projects reflecting a new urban project of plant recovery (…) around the Mériadeck slab or the Place des Quinconces for example.
"Pierre Hurmic, for his part, defends his measures," which are not gimmicks.
"
“You never do enough,” he admits.
But our ambition is to ensure that at the end of the mandate there is no longer a single Bordeaux woman and Bordeaux resident more than ten minutes from a green space.
The city council also underlines the difficulty of vegetating in such a mineral town.
“Place Saint-Projet for example, we're going to plant trees, but as soon as you start digging there are archaeological excavations and networks to be avoided.
Similar place Pey-Berland, which is the archetype of an urban heat island that we want to avoid, explains the ecologist.
You cannot change things overnight.
"
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