More, again and again. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is constantly promoting projects to add more trees and plants in Paris, with ever more ambitious objectives. After pedestrianizing and adding greenery to 300 streets of the capital, the mayor's office wants to more than double the stakes. On Sunday, March 23, Parisians voted for the creation of 500 new "garden roads," through a citizens' vote.

At the heart of this pro-active policy, one number in particular is the subject of debate and is regularly condemned by the opposition, who see it as nothing more than a showy communications instrument: 170,000. That is the number of trees that the City of Paris committed to planting between 2020 and 2026, according to its "tree plan" adopted in 2021. More than eight times the 20,000 planned in the previous term of office. It's enough to make your head spin.

"We shouldn't fetishize this objective," said Christophe Najdovski, deputy mayor in charge of green spaces. Moreover, he made no secret of the fact that this threshold was chosen for symbolic reasons, in line with the number of newborns expected in Paris over the next six years, "with the idea of planting a tree for every birth."

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