Shared street, Le Triangle neighborhood

Broad, traffic-heavy streets, a sea of asphalt swept by dust and heat… this is what the Triangle area bounded by Mountain Sights, de la Savane, and Jean-Talon streets in Montreal looked like just three years ago—a real obstacle course for any pedestrian or cyclist brave enough to venture there!

Today, the oversized roadways have been replaced by paved streets lined with rain gardens and planted with serviceberries, maples, roses, perennials, and grasses.

Winner of a nationwide urban design competition, Catalyse Urbaine led a multidisciplinary team in the redevelopment of the area, which now serves as a showcase for innovative ecological water management practices and a pedestrian-friendly space.

Project innovations:

• Design and implementation of green infrastructure prototypes: bioswales, rain gardens

• Montreal’s first shared street

• Guidance lines and other measures to encourage use of the space by vulnerable populations

• Integration of Silva Cell rooting systems

Project complexity, challenges, and constraints:
Each project phase involved implementing different green infrastructure prototypes. It was necessary to convince Public Works that the water management systems would function effectively.

In the residual spaces created by the narrowing of streets, rain gardens and bioswales were installed. The Mountain Sights Street rain garden was incorporated into the Canadian Standards Association’s Green Infrastructure Design Guide as a model example to follow. To raise residents’ awareness of water importance, the rain gardens were designed so that the water’s path is clearly visible.

The redevelopment of public space also attracted real estate developers. While the City had planned ten years to recoup the investment in the project, it was fully reimbursed in just one year.