Heat wave in Toulouse: can we plant trees in all the streets?
The city of Toulouse wants to green its streets as much as possible, to beautify and fight against heat islands. Examples are rue de Metz, rue de la République and rue Saint-Michel.
Is the Grande rue Saint-Michel doomed to remain a “storage room”, even after its renovation project, scheduled for 2023? While Toulouse is experiencing early and repeated heat waves this year, several options are still on the table, explains Jonnhy Dunal, the district mayor. “The planning team presented us with three scenarios recently. You have to keep in mind that space is limited. But anything is possible. If we want to plant trees, we will nevertheless have to make sacrifices, possibly on parking spaces, and perhaps on the passage of a bus”.
Grand-rue Saint-Michel: “Several options are on the table”
The mayor adds that “all the options will be studied, and the decisions will be taken together, in co-construction with the inhabitants, the traders, all the living forces of the district”.
The Grande-rue Saint-Michel renovation project is the most emblematic of the choices that will be made for the city.
At the end of 2021, the town hall drew up an inventory of all the existing trees and shrubs in order to identify those that are most likely to adapt to Toulouse conditions (climate, type of soil, etc.) in the long term. The fight against heat islands is part of the “refreshments” needed in the city, in the same way as the “100,000 trees” operation by 2030, announced at the start of the mandate.
The tree species of rue de la République were presented
In the rue de Metz project, the construction of which will accelerate at the start of the 2022 school year, trees are planned to replace the current shrubs in containers. “This is part of the street calming project,” explains Julie Escudier, neighborhood mayor. The widened sidewalks will thus accommodate several species, just like in the future rue de la République, which will be under construction in 2023. “We presented all the species presented at a recent public meeting”, recalls Jean-Paul Bouche, the district mayor.