Tokyo plans to go green ahead of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games the city is now bidding for. Over the next 10 years, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government will be planting a forest along Tokyo Bay, increase the number of tree-lined streets, plant grant in parks, and encourage community involvement in it’s 2016 Games bid to nurture a “green movement” reports Japan Times.
Motoaki Kobayashi, the metro official in charge of the environmental section’s greenery plan said, “Tokyo has always worked on increasing greenery, but we’d like this Olympic bid to be a tail wind. To host an Olympics, it is essential that the city be environmentally organized”.
Under the 10-year plan, which was set in 2006, the metro office set up a special team with a budget of 39 billion yen to cover 74 projects this year alone. One project is the 88-hectare forest Umi no Mori (Sea Forest) at the Inner Central Breakwater Landfill site in Tokyo Bay.
Other projects are focussed on adding greenery to existing sites.
As of 2006 Tokyo had an estimated 486,000 roadside trees, according to the metro government. The goal is to increase this to one million within 10 years. The trees will be planted along both new and existing thoroughfares.
The plan also calls for planting medium-height trees between the tall ones already there. Some utility poles will also be taken down and their wires buried to create more space for trees, reports the newspaper.
Another initiative is to add 300 hectares of greenery by planting grass in the fields of all the nearly 2,000 metro-run elementary and junior high schools, as well as at some public high schools and kindergartens.
