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What do you do when you see that your neighborhood, your street, is gradually becoming stripped of trees, where urban maintenance passes by? In Mataró, in the province of Barcelona, ​​on Cós street, Miquel, a resident of the area, decided take action. It carried years of documented frustration. His official complaints began in the distant 2019. He demanded that the environment be taken care of and, after waiting a thousand days for some movement on the part of his City Council, he decided to take direct action, putting in his money, his time and his sweat. For several days, he bought for 34.40 euros and planted five trees in empty tree pits. He sanded and painted two rotting wooden public benches. Replaced several burst tiles with new, safe pieces. He created a livable corner for his community. He did the dirty work with his own shovel and the tools he had around the house. The administrative machinery. The inspectors from Mataró arrived, drew up a report of the “disaster” and the verdict fell like a stone: a financial fine of 1,733.39 euros. The council justifies the sword by citing the local Public Roads Ordinance, the rule that protects the “public domain” from any unauthorized alteration through bureaucratic means. The Kafkaesque thing about the matter is what follows. Because the sanction not only punishes the alleged urban planning violation: the total amount includes the operational cost of the municipal brigades. That is, go to the place, uproot five healthy trees, return to leaving the pavement arrangements as they were and return the street to its condition. It sounds like an institutional dystopia, a kind of ‘Brazil’ distorted in the key of modern urbanism that enables degradation, but the citizen cannot touch. What science says. I’m going to try to explain it with a round of macro studies. The air temperature during the day is always lower under a tree canopy. The shade they cast is essential, but for the cooling to be drastic, a street must exceed a threshold of 40% tree cover. Streets with trees are, on average, 1°C colder in ambient airbut being in direct shade can mean a drop of 10ºC compared to asphalt exposed directly to the sun. In addition, urban trees filter tons of fine particles (PM2.5), drastically reducing the incidence of asthma and respiratory diseases. Oh, and a relationship has been demonstrated between the presence of trees in dense streets (as in the case of Mataró) with a immediate reduction of cortisol and an improvement in the mental health of neighbors. Greener, less stress. There are dozens of direct studies on European cities comparing the heat island mortality. A third of premature deaths would be avoided if 30% tree cover was achieved. It has been measured tree equitythere is dedicated portals to follow up with thermography of the dramas in some areas and the green infrastructure planted by neighbors is, on top of that, more efficient and cheaper to maintain in the long term than artificial cooling. Mataró’s preferences. Sitting on a bench under a leafy canopy means up to 12 degrees less temperature than the asphalt exposed to the sun. This difference saves lives during unbearable heat waves. The plants preserve the local fauna, shelter birds and pollinating insects. They drastically improve the neighborhood’s biome, filter toxic air from exhaust pipes and increase the livability of gray and sad streets. Apparently, another citizen of the neighborhood reported in August 2024 that Miquel was acting on public behalf. This was the beginning of the sanctioning file. In any case, Mataró’s neighbor, Miquel, has challenged the sanction through legal means and defended its civil work, alluding to the aesthetic and habitability improvements, and arguing that it has not caused any damage to public assets. It is not necessary to sign a bombastic global agenda to satisfy the needs of a neighborhood. green guerrilla. The case coincides with similar cases in the past. Claudio Trenta, in Barlassina (Italy), was a 72-year-old retiree who watched with horror as his neighbors fell to the ground – down a huge sinkhole in a zebra crossing. Since they ignored the request, the grandfather bought a bag of tar, covered the pothole in just half an hour of work, and the local police fined him 882 euros. They ordered him to reopen the hole with a pickaxe. In Viña del Mar, Chile, a neighbor lived on the edge of a ravine full of dry brush. Worried about an imminent forest fire, she first asked the municipality for help and, when they refused, she weeded the entire area and threw the organic remains into a nearby container. He fell another fine of 180,000 Chilean pesos for “illegal disposal of prunings and debris.” Even Rod Stewart—yes, the British rock legend—recorded a video filling potholes on his street because he was fed up with bursting his car tires and the local authorities They gave him a public reprimand. Something similar happened to him to Arnold Schwarzenegger. There is a movement, theguerrilla gardening“, focused on rehabilitating landfills and abandoned areas and turn them into parks or community farms. Then come the fines for growing vegetables without paying the corresponding commercial agricultural permits. If the people rule the people, regular fits in here. leave it as it was. The articles on heritage assets They are clear. can be typifiedFor example, handling waste – no longer overturning bins, but rather collecting their contents – altering, painting or affixing posters without permission to streetlights, benches, traffic signs or containers and similar situations. Faced with this situation, Miquel summarizes that “sometimes it seems safer to let a bench rot, a tree pit remain empty and a sidewalk continue to deteriorate than to try to fix it on your own initiative.” What is clear is that, in the midst of a heat wave, the asphalt burns but the bureaucracy burns more, if we look at the price charged by any citizen attempt to reformulate what is habitable. Images | Pexels … Read more