In order to adapt to the climate changethe City Council of Paris approved a new bioclimatic urban plan that prioritizes the growth of green spaces and decreases areas for circulation, particularly in favor of bicycles.

The Local Urban Planning Plan (PLU) sets out a series of objectives for the city for 2035, in which around 70 additional hectares of green spaces are envisaged, with the expansion of some existing parks and the creation of others.

The most ambitious project is a large metropolitan park north, in one of the most popular areas of the city, between the Porte de la Chapelle and La Villette.

In the long term, the goal is to reach an additional 300 hectares, a very ambitious plan considering that in the first term of the current mayor, Anne Hidalgo (2014-2020), 30 hectares of new green spaces were created.

The World Health Organization (WHO) states that an average of 10 square meters of green space per inhabitant is ideal, while at the present time Paris has 5.8 square meters per inhabitant, excluding the forests of Boulogne and Vincennes, on the western and eastern outskirts of the city.

And while priority is given to the growth of green spaces, the PLU establishes as irreversible the progressive conversion into pedestrian area since 2012 from the banks of the Seine, which in the past had been a fast way to cross the city.

The Plan gives very special protection to 250 notable trees and 100,000 alignment trees.

By the middle of the century, the City plans to de-waterproof 40 % of the public space, which means, in particular, replacing concrete or tar coatings with earthen ones.

"Paris is a city particularly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change because the intensity of uses and its mineral character (with a lot of cement or tar in the soils) make it sensitive to urban heat island phenomena," the document justifies.

Having halved vehicle traffic over the past 20 years, the intention is to continue this trend with more space for bicycles, with plans to double the amount of storage space in buildings.

The PLU states that renewable energy production will be mandatory in all real estate projects of more than 1,000 square meters.

Source: El País