All parties and associations agree on the objective of freeing the current Place d’Armes and Rue des Remparts from parking, and creating a large public park. This unifying vision is an opportunity to offer our city a friendly, welcoming public space for residents and visitors alike. Let’s seize the opportunity and give it the best chance of being realized, as quickly as possible and in the best possible way! Only the counter-project makes this possible.
The counter-project, even assuming a reduced underground section, retains almost all the existing trees, including those in the Japanese Garden. Preserving the open ground, it provides ideal conditions for the development of new tree planting. The open-ground design allows water to infiltrate into the soil, while the vegetation helps to cool the building, thus combating the heat island in the city center. The park will provide a pleasant, attractive environment for the entire population.
Vegetation on slabs, stunted and subject to water stress, on grass peeled by the sun, can never lay claim to such quality, and its trees will remain stunted or wither away. The parking area requested by the initiative would require the felling of all the trees on the perimeter, i.e. almost a hundred.
