The Boyer mobility hub: reimagining parking as neighborhood infrastructure

As part of this mandate, Artelia’s multidisciplinary team was responsible for the integrated design of the infrastructure, public spaces, and landscaping, in collaboration with the Montreal Sustainable Mobility Agency and the project’s various partners. The goal was to create a space capable of meeting contemporary transportation needs while actively contributing to the neighborhood’s ecological transition.

An approach based on urban integration

One of the project’s main objectives was to ensure the harmonious integration of the mobility hub into the existing built environment and the surrounding urban fabric. The development was thus designed as a true part of the city, establishing coherent connections with the neighborhood’s shops, institutions, and public spaces.

Landscape architecture interventions helped create gathering spaces, safe pedestrian routes, and recreational areas that encourage the community to embrace the site. Street furniture, plantings, and various amenities were integrated to contribute to a user-friendly, safe, and accessible experience.

The design of the landscaping and public spaces has thus facilitated the harmonious integration of the mobility hub into the existing built environment and the neighborhood’s urban fabric, while helping to improve the user experience, increase green space, and enhance the quality of life.

Sustainable mobility and diversification of transportation options

The Boyer Mobility Hub exemplifies the commitment to bringing together, in a single location, several transportation options that complement solo car travel. The project includes paid parking spaces, electric vehicle charging stations, car-sharing vehicles, BIXI stations, covered bike racks, and a secure pavilion for bike parking.

The development also incorporates safe pedestrian routes that promote universal accessibility, as well as a space for receiving and picking up orders placed with local merchants. This diversity of uses helps reinforce the hub’s role as a neighborhood infrastructure serving the community.

Showcasing the site through landscape and light

The user experience also guided the project’s design. A lighting strategy combining streetlights, bollards, and ambient lighting was developed to ensure safe movement while creating welcoming atmospheres and highlighting certain architectural features of the site.

Landscaping is also a key element of the project. The selection of plants, the layout of planted areas, and the integration of ecological infrastructure help reduce heat islands, improve user comfort, and increase urban biodiversity. The installation of birdhouses and insect hotels also helps create habitats conducive to urban wildlife.

Innovative stormwater management

The site, however, presented a significant challenge: the presence of bedrock at a shallow depth considerably limited the potential for natural stormwater infiltration.

Given the presence of bedrock at a shallow depth (1 to 1.2 m), infiltration potential was limited. Nevertheless, the objective of permanently retaining an 11-mm water depth from a standard rainfall event was achieved in compliance with City of Montreal Bylaw 20-030. The professionals also developed a stormwater management concept incorporating an underground retention basin to temporarily store runoff before its controlled and regulated discharge into the municipal stormwater system.

This approach reduces the impacts of rainfall events while addressing the site-specific geotechnical constraints.

Toward a food-producing neighborhood

One of the project’s most original features is the integration of a three-dimensional vertical structure that can be planted with vegetation, designed to address several functional constraints of the site, including the presence of delivery zones, recycling bins, and adjacent buildings.

The structure, which can be covered with vegetation, was designed using a selection of productive climbing plants—including grapevines and kiwi vines—chosen for their ornamental qualities and their ability to produce edible fruit. Beyond their contribution to greening the site and integrating it into the landscape, these plants help create a more nourishing living environment, where future harvests will further anchor the project in the principles of the “nourishing neighborhood” and urban agriculture.

A new generation of mobility spaces

The Boyer Mobility Hub demonstrates that a parking lot can become much more than just a place to park vehicles. Through an integrated approach where landscape, engineering, mobility, and the environment complement one another, this project helps redefine the role of such infrastructure in the city.

More than just a mobility facility, the Boyer Hub is now a public space in its own right: a place where transportation, biodiversity, sustainable water management, urban agriculture, and quality of life come together for the benefit of the Montreal community.