Krakow's residents voted for a project to return trees to the Main Square during the 2022 Civic Budget voting period. Its justification reads: "The implementation of the project will contribute to the restoration of the historical arrangement of the Main Square. The central point of the city is now mostly a greenery-free zone. Trees will provide some shade and make the square no longer a ‘concrete frying pan’, which is recently becoming one of the hottest places in the city."

On 7 September, residents who voted in favour of the plantings may have felt like the protagonists of the "expectations versus reality" memes. The city boasted on social media about delivering 20 spruce trees in pots to the Main Square. The comments on X (formerly Twitter) perfectly summed up the whole situation in the comments.

We have already written about the problematic attitude of Krakow's authorities towards trees in the context of the felling of over a thousand of those that have the misfortune to "interfere" with the overuse of concrete along the new tram route.

Meanwhile, according to the 2023 Nature Restoration Law adopted by the European Parliament on 12 July 2023, 10% of urban areas in the EU should be covered by tree crowns by 2050. The deadline is quite distant, but we hope that the so-called "concreteosis" will become a thing of the past much sooner. The example of Rzeszów proves that good cooperation between the city and its residents is possible in this respect.