Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has given the green-light to revitalize the French capital’s famous Champs-Élysées by making it more pedestrian-friendly with exciting new attractions, including a seasonal urban beach and an ice-rink around the Arc de Triomphe.
The project, led by PCA-Stream, will involve planting thousands of trees and plants, turning the city streets into an extortionary garden.
Many tourists consider the Champs-Élysées the most beautiful street in the world — “la plus belle avenue du monde” – but locals have a different perspective. Perhaps this was true in the past, but in recent years it has turned into an unpleasant motorway with 64K cars and trucks filling the lanes every day, adding pollution and noise into the local air. The noise level is “one of the highest in Paris,” and most locals avoid it if they can. PCA-Stream claims that only 5% of visitors to the Champs-Élysées are Parisians.
To remedy the issue, local businesses came together to form the Comité Champs-Élysées to lure locals back with an ambitious scheme that involves:
- Planting greenery to improve the air quality in traffic-heavy areas
- Reducing traffic lanes and cars spaces
- Expanding pedestrian-safe zones
- Adding bicycle paths
- Installing temporary stalls and kiosks for events
- Adding children’s playgrounds
The firm explained:
Nature can partially replace costly and polluting infrastructure. For instance, recovering soil permeability wherever possible, creating planted ‘lounges,’ bioswales, and buffer strips to increase water infiltration, and the construction of retention basins where the former ditches of Place de la Concorde lay will filter pollutants and harvest rainwater. The re‐designed living ecosystem of the Champs‐Élysées thus acts as an air purifier, absorbing CO2, minimizing dust, increasing rainwater infiltration, cooling the air via evapotranspiration, increasing the amount of shade and restoring wildlife habitat to increase urban biodiversity.
Additionally, the existing Champs-Élysées gardens will be re-landscaped, and the famous Place de l’Étoile roundabout/traffic circle will reduce its car lanes from eleven to seven. The Place de la Concorde will be revitalized with terraced gardens, trees, and a pool.
The firm has also suggested that the Place de l’Étoile, where the Arc de Triomphe stands, could turn into an urban beach in the summertime and an ice-rink in the winter. There are also plans to construct a cultural center at Place de l’Étoile with city gardens and exhibition halls. The transformations would begin after Paris hosts the 2024 Summer Olympic Games and is expected to be complete by 2030.
