Cité Midtown

Built on a former industrial site bordering the Ville Saint Laurent neighbourhood in Montreal, Canada, Cité Midtown is a residential development focused on renewal and connectivity. This LEED ND project, one of the first in Quebec, began with the remediation of 13 acres of heavily contaminated soil – remnants of the aviation industry factories once common to the area. By the time the project is completed, residents will be picking fresh fruits from the edible vegetation planted throughout the site. Given the site’s border conditions, care was taken to navigate different scales of urban grid by articulating building heights and lane widths, and by carefully distributing the project density. The site was strategically laid out to provide the maximum amount of green space, retaining 45% of the area for public use. Various project nodes are woven through a network of pedestrian walkways and shared roads, providing easy access to the community amenities and a new public park. Innovative safety features and roadway design allow pedestrians and cyclists to share a common road with motor vehicles, effectively giving an often-underutilized space back to the public. Finally, the site features groves of fruit trees and shrubs, fine herbs, medicinal plants and consumable perennials. These “edible landscapes” follow the principles of “permaculture”, where each plant benefits from the other and nature itself works to reduce maintenance and increase resilience, a reminder of the long-term potential for land re-use.