"The greening of the city is an absolute priority, and not just since yesterday, but for a very long time", according to Lydie Polfer, mayor of Luxembourg City, following weeks of debate on the subject in the wake of the recent heatwave.
The City of Luxembourg unveiled its new urban greening concept on Wednesday. It is nothing new in substance, but rather the continuation of a policy that has been in place for years.
Many of the seven priority projects presented, such as the renaturation of the Pétrusse, were launched a long time ago. Polfer pointed out that it is not just about planting more trees, but about a wider adaptation to climate change.
Alongside extreme heat, heavy rainfall and flooding also have to be factored into the planning. The new concept is designed as a long-term blueprint that will be gradually woven into every major development project, which is why a specific timeline could not be set.
To the criticism that spots like Place de Paris, the Place Guillaume II or Hamilius will remain heat islands, Polfer responded that there are technical and urban limits at play. On the Knuedler, the underground car park below simply rules out planting trees.
At the same time, she argued, a city also needs open spaces where demonstrations and events can take place. For Place de Paris, the mayor pointed to citizen participation, which had led to a preference for an open square with water features rather than a more heavily urbanised one.
Another major theme was the situation in the Gare district. The mayor said she shares the criticism voiced by Democratic Party (DP) politicians Anne Kaiffer and Barbara Agostino. The security and hygiene problems around the station have persisted for years and are simply no longer acceptable.
The mayor is pinning her hopes on the "Platzverweis" bill expanding police eviction powers voted through in the Chamber on Wednesday afternoon. It should finally give police more scope to act against individuals whose behaviour is problematic. It will not be a solution for everything, she said, but it will be another tool.
Vacancies remain widespread among Luxembourg City shops. On Avenue de la Gare in the Gare district, around 20% of retail space is empty.
Polfer pointed to the City of Luxembourg's initiative to make temporary use of empty commercial spaces through pop-up shops, at prices well below what the owners would ask on the open market, as the mayor put it.
Attention tends to focus on the empty units, she said, but new businesses do keep opening. She had the list, she noted, and there were almost as many new arrivals as departures. "Trade, after all, means change, as they say", she added.
The question of a possible tax on empty homes and commercial premises also came up on Thursday morning, though Polfer did not want to take a clear position.
She said what is first needed is a clear definition of when a home is considered empty. It would also have to be clarified why a home is unoccupied, for instance because of renovation works or for other personal reasons.
She also did not want to position herself on whether a tax would be the right tool to bring housing back onto the market. She would only take a decision, she said, once all the relevant elements were on the table.
The mayor grew defensive when confronted with her past reputation for opposing a national register of homes and buildings, as had once been floated in the press. In her own telling, Polfer is not against such a register in principle, but simply sees the practical difficulties involved. Setting one up, she said, would be a good move, but also a Sisyphean task.
Since 2014, the city has been digitising all building permits. In 2011, the City of Luxembourg also created a register to list uninhabited homes, at a cost of nearly €500,000.
And what became of that, the mayor asked. The courts, she said, had told the city the exercise was not valid and that it could not use the data it had collected, partly on the grounds of personal data protection.
According to Polfer, there are other ways to work out why a home is empty. The state, she argued, has plenty of data that could be used to pinpoint such cases.
The state has all the data it needs to know who owns what, she said. Land register, owner, property tax, the state has all of it. It also has tax returns, in which people are required to declare what they have or have not acquired, the mayor stated.
