A €250 million project has been approved that will turn the Champs-Elysées in Paris into a pedestrian-friendly avenue, planted with trees, by 2030. Rose Dykins reports
The French capital’s famous Champs-Elysées shopping avenue is slated to become an “extraordinary” garden, according to the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, speaking to Le Journal du Dimanche.
Plans have been drawn up to reduce the space for vehicles by half, transform the avenue’s roads into green spaces for pedestrians, and create a “tunnel of trees” to improve the surrounding air quality.
Architect Philippe Chiambaretta and his agency PCA-Stream came up with the designs to turn the 1.9km Champs-Elysées into a more user-friendly, inviting and healthy public promenade.
The Champs-Elysées committee, which has been campaigning for the redesign of the area since 2018, states: “The legendary avenue has lost its splendour over the past 30 years. It has been progressively abandoned by Parisians and has been hit by several successive crises: the gilets jaunes [the yellow vests grassroots movement for economic justice, with mass demonstrations in 2018], strikes, health and economic crises etc.”
The €250 million project from PCA-Stream will begin by redeveloping the Place de la Concorde square at the south-east of the Champs-Elysées – which is the largest public square in Paris. This is set to be completed by 2024 by the time Paris hosts the Olympics, with the rest of the avenue to be completely renovated by 2030.
In 2021, although the avenue has remained a site for historical crowd-gathering events, celebrations and demonstrations, it is largely avoided by Parisians. The plans to revitalise, cutting down the congestion, and offer something more appealing for locals than the expensive luxury shops and restaurants that attract tourists, should be a catalyst for change.
Hidalgo also told Le Journal du Dimanche that, along with the Champs Elysées project, more blueprints are on the way to transform the French capital “before and after 2024”, including reconfiguring the area around the Eiffel Tower into an urban park.