The 2.4-kilometre lane will be separated from traffic by a raised kerb and planters, with work beginning in February and the seafront road reduced to one lane each way.
More than 700 residents turned out with spades as part of a scheme to bring shade and greenery to the city's most built-up streets, with each tree adopted by a nearby household.
Households will receive a small kitchen caddy and an outdoor bin, with the waste sent to a digester that turns it into biogas and fertiliser for Asher Valley farms.
Empty trams are now running through the small hours on the 4.2 km Line 2 extension to Northfield, as engineers check brakes, signals and platform edges before passengers board next spring.
The station, the first new one in Wrenhaven for 25 years, houses two fire engines and a rescue unit and is expected to shave several minutes off emergency calls in the northern suburbs.
Councillors have approved a three-year programme to lift the Old Quay sea wall by up to 90 centimetres after waves repeatedly spilled over it last winter, flooding cellars and closing the harbour road.
When the village's only shop and post office closed in the spring, neighbours raised €140,000 in shares to reopen it themselves, with volunteers working alongside two paid staff.
The fences are down at Kestrel Park, where a two-year restoration has cleared decades of silt from the boating lake, added 600 trees and given the city's largest green space a new play area and café.
Every beach in the city has met national bathing-water standards again, with six rated excellent, after sewer overflow upgrades cut the number of spills into Greyling Bay by more than half.
Farmers in the Asher Valley have brought in a wheat crop well above recent averages, figures from the Growers' Cooperative show, after a dry, warm finish to the summer rescued fields that were waterlogged at sowing.
