Downtown Saint-Nazaire, an archetypal “city in a garden”

Downtown Saint-Nazaire has a relatively dispersed built environment and a large network of public spaces. Our design transforms the downtown area in line with a “city in a garden” concept, where urban environment and natural environment coexist and flourish in harmony. This approach creates a cooler, more breathable, and more livable city that prioritizes pedestrians and cyclists.

In Saint-Nazaire, the city grows from a garden that blooms throughout streets and public squares. Roadways are remade into vibrant, lush green spaces, protecting and facilitating active transportation. Implementing a clear, collaborative strategy for parking in downtown neighborhoods frees up significant surface area, to be converted into densely planted, permeable softscape. Avenue Albert de Mun, running east-west, is redesigned into a series of contiguous level surfaces to improve foot and bike traffic flow. Wide strips of in-ground gardens line the roadways, separating vehicular traffic from bike lanes and sidewalks, while making the spaces safer for all users. These gardened strips are a hub of biodiversity, richly layered with a diverse mix of climate-resilient groundcover, shrub, and tree species.

Public squares throughout the downtown area — the Place du Marché, Place Marcel Paul, Place des Martyres, and Place du Commerce — have now become true neighborhood gardens.