The seedbed for a greener Gijón: these are the projects for a city full of nature

The urban renaturation plan proposes trees in parking lots and schools, buildings with vertical gardens and the strengthening of large public parks

Trees in the Acerona, in the urban center. | Marcos León

Source: lne.es

Author: R. Valle

Green, green and more green. It is never enough. And to make green the color of Gijón, the new urban naturalization master plan promoted by the City Council outlines the strategies to be developed over the coming decades with the aim of making Gijón a resilient city by 2045. The master plan includes a specific tree plan that commits to planting more than 63,000 trees and endorses initiatives of the mobility plan such as safe school roads. At the same time, it refers to the actions to be developed from the "Eco-resilient Gijón" program -such as the mini-forests in Viesques, Moreda and La Calzada- underway with European funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, and incorporates the need to re-green the area into the debate on the reform of the Wall.

But if you go to the detail of its pages, the document suggests initiatives of different sizes and in different areas.

Trees in parking lots and other micro-actions. In the analysis of the present of the city in this area, the Parks and Gardens Service of the City Council recorded 140 paved areas and 50 urban green areas susceptible to transformation through micro-actions that allow to meet objectives of, they explain, "naturalization in terms of soil permeability, increased biodiversity and incorporation of sustainable urban drainage system". The El Molinón parking lot was added to this list. The idea is to carry out small-scale actions: quick and inexpensive. All in all, the intervention would cover 225,400 square meters, with an estimated planting of 776 trees. These are actions in green areas, spaces between blocks of apartments and, above all, parking areas. The actions to be carried out in this block include proposals for the Plaza del Médico Félix Prieto, pedestrian streets in Viesques and the parking lots of El Molinón and the Las Mestas sports complex. Proposals for greening traffic circles are also considered micro-actions.

Bringing narrow sidewalks to life. The idea of this block is to intervene in a more comprehensive and specific way in areas of intermediate scale, which due to their low environmental quality would need a more specific intervention in order to obtain urban rebalancing. The focus is on narrow sidewalks in urban areas with few trees, but there are also specific actions in green areas such as the Gas Factory Park. Although the most specific action mentioned in the document is the reform of the Muro de San Lorenzo.

Plants to prevent flooding. Here the focus is on areas with a high risk of flooding and high runoff where different actions are intended to improve soil permeability in order to combat these water problems. In these areas, and in general, the choice of trees to be planted would be plane trees, horse chestnut, hackberry and black maple for their water interception capacity. In addition to alders and weeping willows. In terms of species, the recommended method of construction for road areas is the "Stockholm method".

Green avenues with spaces for bicycles. The consideration of green avenues is given in this plan to tree-lined streets linked to a bike lane, whether already built or planned. Their mission is to promote the connection of the green areas of the city with each other and of the green areas with the urban center. Thus, the commitment to grow vegetation in them reaches the major communication axes of Gijón and links the actions of renaturalization with those of sustainable mobility.

Ring and green fingers from the Arco Ambiental. Throughout the last decades the City Council has worked in the periurban area through the Arco Medioambiental project. The new plan involves advancing in this philosophy with a series of interventions for its extension, described as a Green Ring, which connects the paths that already exist in the Environmental Arc and Green Fingers, which would be the urban extension of this Arc. A Green Ring of 28 kilometers is designed that embraces the entire urban area and three urban corridors or fingers that directly connect the Arc of the rural area with the coast through the urban area. Green and blue. Between one and the other, there would be 293 hectares of intervention and 40,000 tree specimens.

Strengthen the five green lungs of the city. These lungs are the parks of Isabel la Católica, Parque Fluvial Viesques, Parque de Moreda, Parque de Los Pericones and El Lauredal, in addition to the Atlantic Botanical Garden from its uniqueness but outside the plan. The idea is to strengthen these spaces for their numerous ecosystemic benefits. The greatest urgency would be, say experts, to act in El Lauredal as a way to mitigate the effects of pollution in that space. But there are also proposals to expand the trees and take care of the side of Isabel la Católica closest to the Avenida de Castilla, expand the small and medium-sized trees in Moreda Park and enrich the green heritage of Los Pericones and the Parque Fluvial, taking into account that it is a flooded area crossed by the Piles. Precisely the plan for the renaturalization of the river is also echoed in the document.

Less gray in the industrial estates. The idea is to develop a special plan for the naturalization of industrial areas to bring green to the gray of the polygons. Among the proposals is to fill outdoor spaces such as parking lots with vegetation and to recommend to owners the creation of vertical gardens and green roofs.

Gardens in schoolyards. Here the idea is to generate green schoolyards and to do so with the participation of the entire school community. It could be planting trees but also having an orchard or a garden with aromatic plants.

A city that breathes through its buildings. But the green of the street is not only sought on the asphalt, the naturalization plan also proposes to use buildings, public or private, as spaces for nature. There are three suggestions on paper: green facades, as integral solutions of urban naturalization that act as "green lungs" and temperature regulators; green roofs with the landscaping of the roofs of buildings and green inner courtyards, as an option to be applied in private and public spaces.