Urban renewal of Mont-Saint-Guibert

city of Mont-Saint-Guibert
Urbanism
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The Mont-Saint-Guibert urban renewal project aims to propose a set of varied and complementary project sheets that transform the identity and coherence of public spaces and improve the living conditions of the town's inhabitants.

The commune of Mont-Saint-Guibert is a town of medieval origin in Walloon Brabant. Marked by a significant slope between the railway station and the church, the historic centre has a coherent old building and numerous alleys and passageways on the hillside. A watercourse at the bottom of the valley has been the site of numerous industrial activities that have been converted. Currently, due to the proximity of Mont-Saint-Guibert to Louvain-la-Neuve, Ottigines and their employment centres, the town is tending to devitalise, losing economic activities which are grouped together either along the regional traffic routes, or in the zoning areas. Similarly, there are fewer and fewer jobs and services, and the new housing areas that have sprung up since the 1970s have tended to turn it into a dormitory town devoid of activities.

Our study therefore seeks to find solutions to improve social and human links, economic activity, employment, diversity, comfort and safety in the public space.

The master plan proposes a coherent framework for future interventions. It defines the objectives and a clear vision for the development of the town centre of Mont-Saint-Guibert. The plan points out five objectives which make it possible to define the physical spaces of the urban renewal:
- Highlighting the Grand'Rue, a soft axis bypassed by busy roads, by putting the pedestrian and its public spaces in the foreground.
- Development of the station platform into a multimodal point in order to reconnect the northern districts and the town centre.
- Linking the green promenade to the Brewery site, and promoting a soft link in the valley at the crossroads of all the major communication routes.
- Designing and strengthening the green fabric and the historical network by developing an educational trail in the form of a green walkway throughout the town.
- Creation of three large parks supported by a multitude of squares in the middle of a rehabilitated landscape linked by a continuous pedestrian path.