Capital Losses
BUENOS AIRES — Argentina’s capital may be about to lose what is arguably its most iconic sight: A new project by the city government led by Mayor Mauricio Macri is turning the 9 de Julio Avenue into a shadow of itself in the name of an ill-conceived public transportation project.
The avenue, sometimes called the widest in the world, has seven central traffic lanes running in each direction, with a pair of streets along either side and an obelisk shooting up from its center. Its tree-filled medians, planted with the jacarandas commonly associated with Buenos Aires, are an emblem of how the city’s early developers prioritized green spaces amid rapid urban growth in the early 20th century.
But trees on the avenue’s medians have already been razed over some nine blocks, the first step toward building the city’s third Metrobus system, a network of exclusive bus lanes. The plan is to have 10 bus lines run in four lanes over a three-kilometer stretch of 9 de Julio Avenue and replace the tree-lined medians with modern bus shelters.
Work began in early January, at the height of the summer holidays, when much of the city empties out. It was only after several blocks worth of trees were removed that people began to notice. Enrique Viale, an environmental lawyer, told me the pace of the work, and the extent of the damage, had caught him by surprise.
Last Wednesday, a judge granted an injunction requested by Viale and others who argued, among other things, that the project was begun without the requisite approval from the city’s legislature.
Now the Macri administration has to take a break from destroying Buenos Aires’s main artery while it defends doing so.
But rather than openly debate the issue, Macri and his staff have denigrated the project’s opponents as being against progress. And they have produced a barrage of silly numbers: Yes, 277 trees will be removed from the medians, the city government says, but the vast majority will be transferred, and with 550 new trees to be planted, the project will bring a net gain of 414.
This arithmetic obscure the big picture, however, and not just because saplings can’t compare with trees half a century old. Another reason is that 9 de Julio Avenue is significant beyond its aesthetics: It has long been a key part of the city’s political and cultural life — the site of celebrations, concerts and protests. The new divisions and bus shelters will destroy its wide-open spaces and foreclose large gatherings.
And all for a project that is fundamentally misguided and a poor use of resources to combat worsening congestion in central Buenos Aires. With a subway line already traveling along the route of the proposed Metrobus, the millions of dollars earmarked for the new bus lanes would be better spent on transferring more passengers underground. It would also make more sense to build bus lanes along side streets, which wouldn’t require altering the central avenue’s physiognomy.
But sense is not the order of the day. In a thinly veiled dig to Macri and his project, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Macri’s greatest political foe, has said she considers trees to be “sacred.” When two politicians who have never showed much interest in the environment try to outdo each other’s tree-hugging credentials, you know they’re working in a system that favors point-scoring over sound policy making. And now a landmark central to Buenos Aires’s identity may end up being its latest casualty.
BUENOS AIRES — Argentina’s capital may be about to lose what is arguably its most iconic sight: A new project by the city government led by Mayor Mauricio Macri is turning the 9 de Julio Avenue into a shadow of itself in the name of an ill-conceived public transportation project.
The avenue, sometimes called the widest in the world, has seven central traffic lanes running in each direction, with a pair of streets along either side and an obelisk shooting up from its center. Its tree-filled medians, planted with the jacarandas commonly associated with Buenos Aires, are an emblem of how the city’s early developers prioritized green spaces amid rapid urban growth in the early 20th century.
But trees on the avenue’s medians have already been razed over some nine blocks, the first step toward building the city’s third Metrobus system, a network of exclusive bus lanes. The plan is to have 10 bus lines run in four lanes over a three-kilometer stretch of 9 de Julio Avenue and replace the tree-lined medians with modern bus shelters.
Work began in early January, at the height of the summer holidays, when much of the city empties out. It was only after several blocks worth of trees were removed that people began to notice. Enrique Viale, an environmental lawyer, told me the pace of the work, and the extent of the damage, had caught him by surprise.
Last Wednesday, a judge granted an injunction requested by Viale and others who argued, among other things, that the project was begun without the requisite approval from the city’s legislature.
Now the Macri administration has to take a break from destroying Buenos Aires’s main artery while it defends doing so.
But rather than openly debate the issue, Macri and his staff have denigrated the project’s opponents as being against progress. And they have produced a barrage of silly numbers: Yes, 277 trees will be removed from the medians, the city government says, but the vast majority will be transferred, and with 550 new trees to be planted, the project will bring a net gain of 414.
This arithmetic obscure the big picture, however, and not just because saplings can’t compare with trees half a century old. Another reason is that 9 de Julio Avenue is significant beyond its aesthetics: It has long been a key part of the city’s political and cultural life — the site of celebrations, concerts and protests. The new divisions and bus shelters will destroy its wide-open spaces and foreclose large gatherings.
And all for a project that is fundamentally misguided and a poor use of resources to combat worsening congestion in central Buenos Aires. With a subway line already traveling along the route of the proposed Metrobus, the millions of dollars earmarked for the new bus lanes would be better spent on transferring more passengers underground. It would also make more sense to build bus lanes along side streets, which wouldn’t require altering the central avenue’s physiognomy.
But sense is not the order of the day. In a thinly veiled dig to Macri and his project, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Macri’s greatest political foe, has said she considers trees to be “sacred.” When two politicians who have never showed much interest in the environment try to outdo each other’s tree-hugging credentials, you know they’re working in a system that favors point-scoring over sound policy making. And now a landmark central to Buenos Aires’s identity may end up being its latest casualty.