In Paris, the Champs-Élysées was originally designed as a place to stroll. But in 2021, around 64,000 cars travel down the eight-lane avenue each day. It’s polluted and noisy, and while the sidewalks are filled with tourists, it isn’t a place where people living nearby want to walk.
The redesign would cut the carbon footprint of the avenue in half while also helping restore small pockets of nature. Chiambaretta writes in a release: “We have upset the balance of the very nature that we intended to control and it is now within the urban fabric, which concentrates 80% of carbon emissions on 2% of the Earth’s surface, that the environmental revolution must take place.”