The Madrid City Council has completed the installation of the vertical gardens of Calle 30 Natura, the municipal pilot project that covers an area of ??3,250 square meters and replaces the concrete walls of the M-30 with 23 plant species, with the aim of cushioning the heat island along the 400 meters that separate the roundabouts of Mariano Salvador Maella and Nueva Zelanda.
The work has a budget of 3.8 million euros and has been carried out over six months, in which pollution sensors have been installed through folding panels to determine the collection of pollutants from the panels, reports the Madrid City Council in a note.
Through these devices, the Madrid City Council intends to establish a monitoring system for atmospheric pollutants and particulate matter, such as CO, CO2, NO, NO2 and PM to know the impact of the project, executed by the Works area and Equipments.
Thus, the data obtained will be compared with the general pollution data from Calle 30 or from the pollution stations of the Madrid City Council to determine the difference in concentration of pollutants between the areas.
And the attraction capacity of biodiversity in the vegetated walls and its evolution throughout the year are valued, paying special attention to the months of faunal activity, which coincide with spring and autumn.
In addition, they have a centralized and sectorized risk system with different sensors to find out about incidents that may arise and adapt the risk to existing needs, so each module has irrigation pipes located horizontally at different heights and have drippers with different flow rates, depending on the irrigation needs and the situation at height.
The Mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, accompanied by the Mobility and Environment delegate, Borja Carabante; the delegate for Works and Equipment, Paloma García Romero, and the councilor for the area delegated for Cleaning and Green Areas, José Antonio Martínez Páramo, visited the New Zealand roundabout area this Friday to see the works first-hand.
The councilor, as EFE has reported, has pointed out that it is a “pioneering and innovative project” that “transforms an urban highway into a vertical garden” and has described its installation as “good news for the city”.
“We are going to give some time to study the effects, the conservation in the most appropriate way, the positive consequences that they have; but, of course, our intention in the future is to be able to continue extending these vertical gardens along Calle 30”, has advanced.
The mayor has invited the third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, to visit the area, and “publicly congratulate us for having the best air quality data that we have ever had in our history”, while also affirmed that the national leader “laughed at this project”.
“Given the laughter, the jokes and the contempt with which this project was received, I invite you to come now and see what the sustainability policies that we have implemented in this city are”, commented the mayor.
