STITCHES
Connecting Québec City's Rivers into the Fabric of Its Natural and Cultural Communities
STITCHES have connected Quebec's peoples to the land since humans first stepped onto the St. Lawrence Lowlands. Like the many individual connection points that make fabric strong and resilient, stitches will bind Québec City's people to its rivers and to the rugged and refined landscapes that shaped and still define the city's setting and culture.
The stitch is the basic unit of action in this comprehensive connective strategy. The collective impact of these stitches at FIVE SCALES will create a unified, culturally responsive, and place-based identity for Québec City's rivers that reconnects the city to its regional context and to its rivers. In making the city's great geologic and ecological narrative visible to its inhabitants and visitors, the stitches emphasize the perpendicular connections that will enhance the social equity, environmental, and economic conditions of surrounding neighborhoods, along with linear connections parallel to the rivers.
MEGA STITCH | Regional Network | Shield to Appalachia
Along its rivers - its forest fissures - Québec City will serve as a continentally-scaled ecological stitch. The city will connect the great North American Eastern forests by joining the northern boreal woods with the Appalachian deciduous woods, an essential forest hingepoint as climates change over the coming century.
MACRO STITCH | Metropolitan Network | Seven Rivers, One Forest
From the regional ecological story, greater Québec City's rivers are stitched into in a comprehensive metropolitan fabric connecting community, recreation, and environment. While four rivers literally flow through the municipal boundaries of Québec City, to truly reinvent its rivers, all seven rivers must be embraced. A metropolitan loop, symbolized by Quebec's traditional Arrow Sash, connects the rivers' outer reaches. The Sash, along with the fabric of community corridors, will thread the rivers into the regional open space network, adjacent urban districts and neighborhoods.
MESO STITCH | River and Community | Rugged to Refined
At the community scale, stitches reach from the river into the neighborhoods, catalyzing development of housing, amenities, gateways, productive landscapes, and educational institutions.
MICRO STITCH | Catalytic Sites | Connecting Nature and Community
Actions at the site scale emphasize new ways for people to interact with nature along rivers. Two of these are Get Connected with Nature and Gardens of Extraction.
NANO STITCH | Terroir | Materials of the Place
Quebec City's river landscapes are the bedrock of its human and natural identity. It is the land of the First Nation people, further cultivated and urbanized by Europeans. Stone, wood, and water bind the community to its rivers and its rivers to the vast continental story in which Québec City has played a major historic role.
Working at these five scales, Québec's people will be further connected to the land and to each other. Our rivers have always been here: it is society's perception of them that needs reinventing. Water will bring more vibrancy and meaning to Quebecers when we change how people, their neighborhoods, and the city connect to the rivers.
The waters of Québec await you.
(Competitor's text)
(Click French version to read the jury's comments)
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