Montréal, a Generation Restoration role model city, has a city-wide portfolio of flagship restoration initiatives, including urban tree planting, riverbank restoration, control of invasive plant species, green stormwater infrastructure, and soil remediation. Its comprehensive policy and strategy landscape scales nature-based solutions, prioritizing vulnerable neighborhoods and degraded sites, and it advances climate resilience and biodiversity protection through nature-based solutions that address heat, flooding, and ecological degradation.
About the city
Montréal’s city area has a population of approximately 1.7 million residents, while the metro area contains a population of approximately 4.2 million residents. Montréal is located on an island in the province of Québec in the southeast of Canada, at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers. It has a warm-summer humid continental climate, with hot summers and freezing, snowy winters. Not only is Montréal an important industrial and financial center in Canada, it is also an important cultural hub, and the French-speaking metropolis of the Americas.
Local challenges
Montréal faces various temperature-related climate hazards. It is experiencing increases in extreme hot days, heat waves, and the urban heat island effect. Conversely, it also struggles with extreme cold hazards and ice storms. Increased freeze-thaw cycles are another challenge, which occur when winter temperatures fluctuate around freezing, leading to expansion and contraction of moisture within both infrastructure and soil, causing surface damage. Montréal is also threatened by urban and riverine flooding caused by extreme rainfall and rapid snowmelt, which overloads drainage systems and raises river levels. At the same time, Montréal faces various biodiversity-related challenges, including the degradation and fragmentation of natural habitats (particularly due to urban sprawl), the spread of invasive plant species that threaten native biodiversity, and warmer temperatures that accelerate their proliferation. Furthermore, Montréal faces challenges related to air quality and pollution, which are exacerbated by rising urban temperatures.
How the city leads in restoration
Montréal has a robust portfolio of restoration initiatives, which include strengthening urban forests, restoring riverbanks, capturing and absorbing rainfall through green infrastructure, applying phytoremediation (a remediation method that utilizes plants to remove, transfer, or stabilize contaminants in soil and water), controlling invasive plant species, and major park creation and restoration projects. These initiatives, rooted in an innovative policy landscape that centers ecological preservation, demonstrate Montréal’s commitment to improving urban livability while supporting biodiversity and increasing resilience to climate change.
To support the growth and resilience of urban forests, Montréal is in the process of implementing a large-scale urban tree planting effort. This initiative, ongoing from 2020 to 2030, includes the planting and maintenance of 500,000 new trees, selected for their suitability for the urban environment and resilience to climate change. This ambitious goal is supported through a shared effort: the City manages plantings on municipal public land, while the Alliance Forêt Urbaine (Urban Forest Alliance), a coalition of many non-profit organizations, manages plantings on institutional and private land through financial support, notably provided by the City. Since this goal was adopted, more than 250,000 trees have already been planted.
Montréal’s ambitious tree planting program is supported by various initiatives. A Demineralization Program supports boroughs in transforming paved surfaces into spaces prepared for tree planting. By creating or upgrading planting pits, the initiative promotes the expansion of urban canopy. Funding prioritizes neighborhoods most vulnerable to urban heat islands, strengthening climate resilience. Furthermore, Montréal is engaged in implementing and researching microforests for ecological restoration and social benefits and has planted close to 50 microforest sites. Montréal also engages in an innovative wood recovery program, as part of its Emerald Ash Borer Management Strategy. The city removes dying ash trees infected by the Emerald Ash Borer pest, and wood is recovered and given second life in outdoor furniture for parks, through a collaboration with the non-profit organization Centre de Valorisation du Bois Urbain.
Another core restoration initiative focuses on riverbank restoration in Montréal’s large parks, with a target of restoring 10 kilometers of public shorelines. Taking place in various waterfront areas, this program, launched in 2021, aims to protect riverbanks from erosion, improve and diversify public access to the water, and enhance biodiversity. More precisely, this program aims to stabilize eroded riverbanks to protect users and park infrastructure, expand and protect the riparian strip to promote biodiversity and improve the resilience and ecological functions of the riverbanks, and enhance waterfront landscaping and amenities.
To enhance biodiversity while mitigating urban flood risk in built areas, Montréal is utilizing infrastructure and developments to capture and absorb rainwater. This includes “sponge parks” and rain gardens that systematically integrate draining green infrastructure to more effectively manage rainwater and support infiltration in a sponge-like effect, while serving as multifunctional spaces for city residents. Other features, such as the extensive installation of street bioretention cells, the use of large ponds to collect rainwater, and management of underground infrastructure, are also being implemented.
In the eastern part of the City, a soil remediation project was carried out on four hectares of former industrial wasteland. This demonstration project concluded that these approaches can be applied in various situations, especially when there is no time constraint for soil decontamination. Moreover, the Montréal Botanical Garden, which welcomes about 750,000 visitors each year, has set up phytotechnology demonstration stations on its grounds. This illustrates how phytotechnologies can purify water, capture pollutants, and support sustainable urban design, and can also generate various other positive effects, including enhanced carbon sequestration, improvement in air quality, and promotion of biodiversity. To enhance awareness of this nature-based solution, the City has developed hands-on educational materials through exhibitions along a nature trail at the site.
To protect biodiversity, Montréal is working to control invasive plant species. This includes interventions in various parks across the City to remove invasive plants, accompanied by seeding and planting native plants in the same area. Among the many dozens of invasive species that are being monitored, 22 are considered priority species and are subject to more intensive monitoring and restoration interventions.
Major restoration initiatives are taking place through the innovative development and design of two large parks: Parc Frédéric-Back and Parc-nature de l’Écoterritoire de la falaise. The Parc Frédéric-Back project is taking place on a decommissioned landfill site. Restoration efforts include extensive planting of native plants, creating new habitats for thriving biodiversity while reducing the urban heat island effect. The park also features innovative circular economy approaches in landscape restoration, such as the use of recycled construction materials for earthworks, the production of soil for planting, as well as the construction of benches and pathways. The Parc-nature de l’Écoterritoire de la falaise project takes place in the context of the reconstruction of an interchange. The project focuses on conserving and connecting a large natural area characterized by an escarpment, woodlands, grasslands, and high ecological value habitats. As part of this project, paved and artificial spaces will be transformed into green space, with the overall aim to protect biodiversity, enhance ecological connectivity, and provide accessible natural spaces for residents while safeguarding fragile ecosystems.
Other important initiatives in Montréal include natural habitat protection, for which the City has set the target to protect 10% of terrestrial natural habitats, including woods, wetlands, shrublands. Furthermore, the Ecosystems Management Program in Montréal’s large parks supports environmental preservation while encouraging public access: inventorying flora and fauna, and monitoring ecosystems and biodiversity allow for informed decision-making (for example, the suitable location and design of recreational trails and wildlife observatories).
In addition, the Pollinator Garden, home to various nectar-producing plants to provide sources of nectar throughout the year to pollinators, has been set up in front of the Insectarium of Montréal and serves as an inspiration for boroughs, institutions, and citizens who might want to do the same. Furthermore, the City’s network of community and collective gardens not only further supports pollinators but also advances urban green space while providing sustainable and resilient local food systems for its residents.
These initiatives are supported by a strong strategic and policy framework that embeds ecological restoration across Montréal’s long-term planning. The Strategic Plan Montréal 2030, the Climate Plan 2020–2030, and the Nature and Sports Plan establish an overarching vision for climate resilience and biodiversity protection, including Montréal’s commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050, ecosystem protection, restoration and enhancement within the large parks network, the greening of the urban environment, and the overall enhancement of ecosystem services for citizen health and wellbeing. The 2050 Land Use and Mobility Plan further supports these objectives through several important targets aimed at preserving natural soils and wetlands, enhancing connectivity, improving access to shores and riverbanks, redistributing road space, and demineralizing surfaces to green the most built-up environments. It aims to increase the amount of urban green space in Montréal to 40% of the territory by 2050, while prioritizing greening of its most vulnerable neighborhoods.
Complementary strategies further reinforce restoration throughout Montréal. The City’s Water Strategy guides the integration of green infrastructure to capture and absorb rainfall, including a target to dedicate at least 10% of public surface areas to such infrastructure. The Urban Agriculture Strategy encourages resilient and ecological urban agriculture and improves the City’s management and governance framework for urban agriculture. Through its Pollinator Protection Plan, Montréal is adapting its practices for the development, management and maintenance of green areas to meet the needs of pollinator species, through efforts that create and connect pollinator-friendly habitats and improve pollinators’ living conditions.
