Development guidelines for Griffintown’s public realm

Aligned with the goal of revitalizing the Griffintown district, the City of Montreal commissioned a complete concept for the design of the public domain, as well as the preliminary geometry for all the streets in the area. Through this neighborhood project, the City of Montreal wanted to introduce specific street models that support an innovative mobility strategy focused on active and public transportation.

The multidisciplinary team was commissioned to design the development guidelines for Griffintown’s public realm. The exercise, carried out in collaboration with various city departments, provides a framework for the various designers who will be involved in the creation of the public domain over the next ten years, as well as for the managers and technical departments of the City of Montreal in planning the development and redevelopment of the public domain in this fast-growing district.

The urban hierarchy is based on 4 typologies that are unique to the district, as defined in detail in the guide. Marking the symbolic heart of the neighborhood, the inhabited streets and their islands of sociability, with benches associated with planting pits, offer a public realm enhanced in material terms. This core is based on a disruption to the street grid, metaphorically referred to as the urban archipelago, making it a first-rate public space, reinforcing its socially unifying potential and taking the form of a huge public square on the scale of the neighbourhood, including three future parks.

In particular, the guide covers the reconstruction of pavements and sidewalks, the redevelopment of intersections, the integration of bicycle lanes, the upgrading of infrastructure, the development of a tree structure, and the integration of street lighting and street furniture. The redevelopment of the public realm is intended to be innovative, with the ambition of introducing good sustainable development practices.