Abstract

Increasing awareness of the negative effects of urban sprawl has ignited a significant debate on this issue in Montreal and has emerged as a serious concern. Rapid increase in urban sprawl between 1951 and 2016 within the Montreal Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) highlights the urgency of addressing this challenge. Efforts to protect Montreal's forests, agricultural lands, and other open areas from further urban sprawl have become increasingly important. This study assesses several greenbelt scenarios as potential strategies to control urban sprawl. To explore potential future pathways and provide guidance for future planning, this study proposes targets, limits, and warning values to urban sprawl as a reference framework. Various urban development scenarios for the Montreal CMA and its Census Subdivisions (CSDs) until 2070 are developed and evaluated. Scenarios 1 to 3 are evaluated as unsustainable, scenario 4 represents a transitional range toward sustainability, scenario 5 is somewhat sustainable, and scenario 6 is sustainable. The Montreal CMA is surrounded by valuable natural areas, including agricultural lands which provide an opportunity to establish a greenbelt around built-up-areas. This study assesses four greenbelt scenarios to evaluate their potential for curbing urban sprawl. At the CMA level, the analysis reveals that while greenbelt scenarios significantly reduce sprawl compared to the current trend, they remain inefficient to achieve the limit to urban sprawl in Montreal. None of the proposed greenbelt scenarios reaches the desirable limits or targets and fall beyond the warning values. However, at the CSD level, the greenbelt scenarios significantly affect certain areas, with Gore projected to meet its target and several other CSDs falling within the range between the limit and the warning value, demonstrating effectiveness at curbing urban sprawl. This research demonstrates the potential of greenbelts to positively influence urban development patterns towards sustainability, even if the current proposal does not fully achieve the defined targets and limits. Further improvement and adaptation of these strategies may lead to more sustainable urban development outcomes in the long term. This study introduces a quantitative reference framework for evaluating the effectiveness of potential growth management strategies in the Montreal CMA and its CSDs. The findings offer a valuable perspective on the potential future of urban sprawl and allow for a comparison of various planning alternatives.