Demonstration in Paris against a project to fell trees to expand a nursery

“We are defending a new model of urban planning where trees have their place,” explained to AFP David Belliard, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of the transformation of public space, who came to the mobilization on rue Préault, in the Plateau district.

“We are part of this majority but this mobilization helps us to put pressure” on these subjects, added the president of the environmental group at the Council of Paris, Fatoumata Koné.

The project opposed by local residents - a petition has collected more than 1.700 signatures - provides for the reconstruction of the crèche, built in the 1960s and not renovated since the 1980s, in the green space on the other side of the street, currently sheltered from 12 chestnut trees which would be cut down.

"We need this crèche. The Plateau district is one of the most deficient in Paris (in places for children), we cannot, for the future, deprive ourselves of it", explained to AFP the PS mayor of the 99th arrondissement, François Dagnaud, contacted by telephone. The new nursery must have 84 beds instead of the current XNUMX.

“Putting a crèche and trees against each other leads to a dead end,” he said, favoring “a solution, and we are working to find it, which allows us to reconstitute the crèche and preserve the trees”. He said he had discussed it with the socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.

“It seems very curious to me this choice to cut down the trees, especially given the majority on the left, I am surprised,” explained Guillaume Thura, 47, on the spot. “Today it is 35°C, the street is sheltered from this heat thanks to the trees,” he argued.

Living “next door”, this National Education employee discovered the project and the mobilization through the drawings made by the children of his establishment.

Expressing the same incomprehension, Louise Neri, a 46-year-old doctor, said she “bought here after the Covid-19 lockdown because the neighborhood is green: it makes you breathe and we needed it”.