The world is constantly changing, but some parts of it change more quickly than others. Landscapes, generally, change slowly and gradually if at all: on a return visit to the Alps, you will expect to see the same mountains as many years before and be rarely disappointed.
Cities, by contrast, evolve much more quickly, and some add new features to their townscapes faster than you can visit them.
Take Nice, for example. Just a little over ten years ago, the Paillon Promenade – a city centre walkway that covers the final mile of the paved-over Paillon river – basked in the sunlight of becoming the city’s newest visitor attraction.
But now, the promenade between the Mediterranean coast and the Acropolis Congress Centre is already old hat, and the spotlight shines on the new garden that has been created: the Paillon Extension, which covers the ground of the razed-to-the-ground Congress Centre and beyond, almost doubling the size of the landscaped Promenade.
The new garden – inaugurated in October 2025 – is officially called Season 2 of what is a potentially an open-ended campaign to improve the city’s climate security and to turn Nice into the Mediterranean’s Capital Of Sustainability.
The project’s declared objective is to improve the living conditions of the local citizens through the instruments of beauty …
… and of culture.
This goes much further than putting up the odd modern sculpture. Eventually, the Paillon Promenade will be lined by a variety of smaller exhibition and performance venues, but for the time being, the immediate objective was to upgrade the status of the Louis Nucera Library and the Museum of Contemporary Arts.
Both institutions were once stashed away in the space between the Congress Centre and the Palais des Expositions, nearly invisible from most streets in the town centre. Now they enjoy their newly-acquired prominence as the centrepieces of the city’s newest attraction.
But the landscaped design of the Paillon Promenade also has a practical purpose and is meant to serve as an important cog in the wheel of climate engineering. Wait a minute, some of you will say, doesn’t the Cote d’Azur already boast a near-perfect combination of mild winters and pleasantly warm summers?
Well, perhaps it is true that the French Riviera enjoys the best weather in Europe, but the fear is that climate change may add a few centigrades to hot summer days which have, in recent years, already come to hover on the edge of the tolerable.
1500 newly planted trees will not only reduce the local CO2 emissions but also, at least that is the plan, create a “canyon of fresh breezes” that will benefit the entire urban environment. This is the concept of the Urban Jungle, the idea of creating a counterpoint to the surrounding Asphalt Jungle in order to improve the overall environmental balance.
In the meantime, however, it is probably better not to hold your breath while waiting for the urban air to fully clean up: it will obviously take some time for this Urban Jungle to grow up. As of now, some of the trees are mere saplings. But we must not forget that the Amazon, just like Rome, was not created in one day.
Season 2 of the Promenade du Paillon continues to use one of Season 1’s leitmotifs: as in the park’s older section, there is water, water everywhere in the shape of pools, lakes and fountains.
But Season 2 is no mere rehashing of the ideas from Season 1 – the dimension of climate security is just one of the new priorities. There is also a determination to broaden the park’s appeal: whereas the functional elements in the older section of the Promenade appeared to focus mainly on children’s activities, Season 2 offers features for sportifs of all generations: in addition to a well-equipped open-air gym near the end of the walkway (close to the Palais des Exhibitions), there are also areas of activity for folks who may be past the first flush of youth.
The Paillon project, meanwhile, is not without its detractors. Much of the criticism has focused on the costs: the eventual bill for the green development will run into the hundreds of millions, and Nice is already plagued by one of the highest municipal deficits in France.
Many people also disagreed with the decision to destroy the town-centre auditorium of the Theatre National de Nice that stood next to the Acropolis. A new large auditorium for the theatre will eventually be built near the airport, in conjunction with a new Congress Centre, but it is feared that this space will be less accessible for many of the town’s citizens.
It is well known that Mayor Christian Estrosi – one of the most powerful politicians in the South of France – intends to crown his rule with the designation of Nice as the European Capital of Culture, and it appears he is determined as ever to pursue his objective through a strategy of reviving ancient ways of life with bold, modernistic strokes.
The cities of the world are constantly changing, but some cities change faster than others, and few have changed as much over the past ten years as Nice. Even Estrosi’s critics need to admit, however, that all the major municipal projects – such as the creation of a modern tramway system and the St Isidore shopping centre with its adjacent Eco Park – were designed to address pressing urban problems and delivered solutions with a strong ecological dimension.
Meanwhile, Season 3 in Nice’s campaign of sustainability is already taking shape: a new green space is being created by the banks of the River Var in the west of the city, where a 50-acre “brownfield site” will be returned to its natural state by the year 2030. In the Grand Parc de la Plaine du Var, urban “agricultural, food and horticultural spaces” will alternate with sport and recreational facilities.
Make no mistake: not all of these plans will prosper and bear fruit, and there will always be many who are disappointed by the results. But just as some of the recent additions to the townscape will inevitably disappear sooner or later, …
… other new features of Nice will remain, develop and grow. You have not heard the last roar from the Champion Of Sustainability yet!
