From the plain to the grove: The archetypal features of the periurban landscape project on the Montreal’s fringe (Quebec)

Abstract

While the accelerated development of new peri-urban areas is often considered banal, their qualitative dimensions take paradoxically an unequaled importance. In these territories, the urban and agricultural interfaces, which are both polymorphic and generic, carry fragments of nature, agricultural parcels or village atmosphere that are valued by the inhabitants. In this sense, the relationship between urban and agricultural realities represents a potential of meanings to be explored in terms of urban planning. This article presents the results of an action research conducted in collaboration with a peri-urban community of Montreal’s agglomeration seeking to give meaning and territorial coherence to various projects of residential densification and economic development at the junction of inhabited and cultivated areas. Through the implementation of a coproduction process fueled by local, practical and academic knowledges, this work allowed us to draw a diagnosis of the main territorial planning issues arising from a landscapes’ characterization, to conduct a spatial visioning process, and to proposed prospective design interventions to illustrate this vision. Taking advantage of significant and valued landscape archetypal features, the principles and criteria that result from this exercise highlight the possibilities of preservation, enhancement and development of the territory to guide future municipal projects. Based on the lessons of various experiments of landscape project carried out in Quebec, the current approach shows the potential of landscape archetypes to feed the project of an inclusive narrative of plural views that takes advantage of the relationship between urban and agricultural areas. © 2020 Universite des Sciences et Technologiques de Lille. All rights reserved.