This underground tramway has certainly made people talk! And it’s certainly not over yet. Besides, why is the world beautiful? Simply because it is varied, even if sometimes spoiled. Everyone sees things in their own way, as they like them. And maybe that’s just fine. Hasn’t it been said that speech must be free?
It was beautiful, it was grand… Imbued with that particular grace of the beautiful Nice trees, the great pine of Durandy Square didn’t withstand the tram construction, despite several months of reprieve that could have suggested its survival.
We had asked for it, but respecting a natural monument of ecology and its free beauty does not seem to be a priority in Nice. Nice, the capital of beauty before being an economic or technological capital, sees its natural heritage endangered.
On the Victor Hugo side, barricades are being erected, oranges are to be replanted, but nothing is clear in all of this: operations are carried out sporadically without prior information but are always justified by an alleged disease, especially… even when it’s unjustifiable.
Let’s stop talking about replanting. It’s time our decision-makers understand that the lifespan of a tree is not the lifespan of a human, and that a centennial tree is a young tree. Trees are not commodities to be disposed of at will.
We cannot replace a Pine like the one from Durandy Square, which now looks like a disaster area. Dostoevsky said that beauty would save the world, so one might fear that ugliness would do the opposite.
We condemn this programmed destruction of our century-old, even multi-century-old, Nice plant heritage! And it is not by replacing them with small and young trees that will never grow much considering how they are planted and especially the great air pollution that Nice suffers, and all its inhabitants, that we will regain this irreplaceable vegetal charm that characterized Nice.
Where the tram passes, trees perish, unfortunately, that’s what we witness, and it’s due to a lack of will, not an inevitability!
Jeanine Costamagna, President of the Saint Roch-Vauban Neighborhood Committee
André Minetto, Nice Eco-Democrat
