Paris will plant its first “urban forest” at a busy roundabout as part of a plan to transform the French capital into a garden city, Reuters reports.

This winter, the city will plant 478 trees in Place Catalogue, near Montparnasse train station, as a major project of Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who wants to reduce noise, pollution and fight global warming.

The aim is for this urban forest to become functional by June next year, and similar forests will be created elsewhere, such as in front of Paris City Hall.

Designed by the late Spanish architect Ricardo Bofil in the 1980s, the interchange at Plaza Cataluña has been a busy thoroughfare for cars for decades. In recent years it has been transformed into a Dutch-style cycle-friendly intersection that also marks the start of the “voie verte” or green cycle lane to the southern suburbs.

“The temperature that you can feel in this little forest will be 4 degrees cooler compared to what we could have outside, so it will be very nice,” Hidalgo said.

“We’re also working on rainwater recycling, and here, too, we can recycle rainwater to be able to irrigate, maintain and allow this urban forest to grow. So it will be really nice,” says the mayor.

Paris City Hall said 25,000 trees had already been planted last winter, and in the past two years several streets in Paris with schools have been closed to cars and turned into mini-parks.

Tree planting is a key part of Hidalgo’s second term as mayor, after he built miles of bike lanes during his first six-year term.

Paris claims to be one of the greenest capitals in Europe, with large green areas of the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes on either side of the city, sometimes referred to as the “lungs” of the capital.

Paris City Hall plans to plant an additional 170,000 trees between 2020 and 2026, and as of November 2020, more than 63,000 trees have already been planted.

Hidalgo’s left-green coalition has also reduced car spaces in the city, increased parking fees and is phasing out diesel cars in the city centre.

The city’s latest plan is to banish large sport utility vehicles (SUVs) from the city center, with citizens voting on the issue in February.