The Valencia City Council has started this Monday the removal of the 182 planters in the Town Hall Square to replace them with 152 new concrete planters.
The councilman of Urbanism, Juan Giner, has been in charge of explaining the reasons for the replacement: “They had neither the design nor the aesthetics suitable for a historical environment”.
The cost of the new 152 planters in Valencia
The intervention, which was also an election promise, is not limited only to the planters. It also includes the replacement of the 37 current benches with 42 new benches made of treated wood and iron legs (36 in the square and 6 in Marqués de Sotelo).
The new elements seek a “coherent arrangement” and follow an urban style guide that, according to the City Council, will be used in future downtown projects.
The change will take 3 weeks to complete and they will install 152 units (123 in the square and 29 in Marqués de Sotelo Avenue). with 5 different models (square, conical and pyramidal) with heights from 45 to 123 cm. Resistant species will be used, with low water consumption and adapted to the Mediterranean climate, without invasive species.
The planned investment for this action amounts to 430,000 euros.
What will be done with the removed planters? The 182 elements qualified as “ugly, dropped without any success or order and lacking identity” will be reused to create cat colonies and others will be used in plots to delimit parking areas.