Corredor de biodiversidad_Rosa_Barba

Accelerated climate changes, which are having a growing impact on the entire planet, can partly be traced to the fast-paced car-oriented urban development of the 60s and 70s. Dictated by triumphal transportation and fossil fuel industries, decisions made at the time led to the fast disappearance of agricultural lands and tree cover from many cities around the world. Canadian cities were no exception.

In Montréal, the Borough of Saint-Laurent was particularly affected with 70% of its 42,8-square-kilometer territory devoted to industrial and commercial activities, closely connected to an international airport and a major highway network. As temperatures rose steadily over the last decades, affecting its residents, the borough started to look for environmentally friendly solutions.

In 2018, Montréal launched a national, multidisciplinary competition, in the hope of generating a master plan that would bring biodiversity back into the city grid while providing its citizens with direct access to nature. The main goal behind the competition was to create a Biodiversity Corridor through a series of interventions that would reconnect existing and future green spaces through a continuous corridor allowing animals, insects and vegetation to move freely within their regained habitat.

Our team’s winning entry proposed to use a high voltage powerline corridor as the "backbone" of the project. The hope was that the giant pylons currently dominating the landscape would soon be hovering above flowering meadows attracting birds, pollinating insects and small animals. Ground contours and a modulated topography would eventually enliven this enriched landscape, breaking away from a feeling of homogeneity. The new green network would help reconnect several isolated wooded areas as well as existing ecological reserves.

The Biodiversity Corridor, which is meant to be implemented over a period of 20 years, will serve as a laboratory for Montréal, but also for other cities around the world.