The mayor of Madrid, Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida, continues with his intention to raise the flag of the environment against the left. After boasting of having achieved compliance with the European minimums in terms of air quality in the city, thanks mainly to the effects of Central Madrid and the situation of the pandemic, the City Council of the capital has presented 30 Nature Streetan initiative to cover the concrete walls of the M-30 with vertical gardens with the objective of “naturalize” both the main Madrid road and the town. And it is that this plan contemplates an initial cost of four million euros to cover about 400 meters of this road as a pilot project with the intention of extending it to the entire highway. In total, public spending of about €30 million.
“It’s an environmental improvement”
“This renaturation and regeneration project of such an emblematic road will allow us to improve our sustainability policies to make the growth of the city compatible with the improvement of our quality of life and our air quality”, Almeida assured this Tuesday at the presentation of Calle 30 Natura, a project to “naturalize” the ring road as well as save on graffiti removal that accumulate in these concrete walls. But not only that, but also to take another step in the fight against pollution, which has already become its banner in recent weeks. And it is that in his opinion “this intervention is not only an aesthetic improvement, but an environmental improvement” with which “to adopt more effective measures to alleviate contamination”.
Thus, the Madrid City Council has given the green light to this plan to cover the walls of the M-30 with vertical gardens that will begin this week with an execution period of six months in a section as a pilot project. The chosen enclave has been the Avenue of Enlightenment along some 400 meters in length, between the Mariano Salvador Maella roundabout and the New Zealand roundabout, and forms part of “the commitments of the current government team of increase green infrastructure in the city to help improve air quality and adapt the capital to the forecast climate change scenarios,” says the Mobility and Environment area of the Madrid executive.
€30 million
This feasibility study to verify its effect is going to have a cost of almost four million euros, as Almeida stated during the presentation and appears in the contract award, which took place on December 29 with Lantania, Azul and Padecasa as beneficiaries. However, the intention of the Consistory with this environmental experiment is to extend these vertical plantings to the rest of the walls of the road during the next year, that is, if he repeats in the position after the municipal elections on May 28. In this way, he has promised to continue “transforming 100,000 square meters of concrete into vegetables” at a cost, as the mayor has already advanced, of some not trivial €30 million.
Vertical gardens of ‘Calle 30 Natura’. City of Madrid
So far, the project -which will begin this week- contemplates the installation of “pollution sensors” in the vertical gardens themselves to detect and measure the collection of pollution from the panels, “especially for people who live nearby or use the environment as pedestrians”, points out the City hall. These will be built by drop-down panels to be able to access the structures for their review and maintenance while the vegetation will be composed of “functional species” of “high resistance, low water consumption and suitable for the surrounding conditions”. In addition, they will have a system of automated irrigation and monitoring to “know the conditions of the gardens in real time and keep the vegetation in optimum condition”.
All the people of Madrid will thank you
Asked about the maintenance of both these systems and the plants, Almeida has admitted that “it will be a challenge and a challenge“While he has promised that” the fixation and adequate conservation projects have been drawn up.All the people of Madrid will thank that there be green roofs that allow us to improve the quality of life”, he assured the media at the event.
A “dirty” or treeless Madrid
This fierce commitment to appropriate the defense of the environment and the fight against pollution that the mayor has undertaken in recent months collide with the reality of the localitywhere thousands of neighbors accumulate complaints about the lack of cleanliness of the streets of the different neighborhoods. Given this, and in order to deal with criticism, Almeida focused on the previous government and stated that “Madrid is much cleaner” since his arrival in Cibeles. “The cleanliness of the city has improved considerably. It is not the dirty city that we inherited from the previous team and it is no longer the main problem for the people of Madrid,” he said last October. However, the inhabitants continue to ask the City Council for immediate measures to put an end to the “dunghill” in which they say they are living.
To this situation must also be added the massive felling of trees throughout the capital, as in the Plaza del Carmen; the burying with cement part of the vegetation of the Retiro Park and other areas, such as Alameda de Osuna; the non-compensation of the trees fallen by Filomena; as well as the lack of incentive of the electric vehicle in favor of conventional transport.
