55 000 hectares for Nature

How can we accommodate the quarter of a million new residents projected by demographers while preserving the natural spaces that define the identity of the Bordeaux metropolitan area?

To answer this question, the Urban Community of Bordeaux has launched an international consultation. The workshop responded as part of the group led by the TER agency, proposing to reverse the problem and place nature at the center. How, then, can we create more nature with more inhabitants? Urban growth, once seen as a constraint, becomes an opportunity: each project, but also each stakeholder and resident, becomes a driving force for maintaining, developing, and strengthening the presence of nature throughout the territory. This reformulation, shared by the team and then by the elected officials, leads to a proactive approach to preserving natural spaces. By asserting that the city can no longer be built without nature, the adopted slogan, “creating more nature with more inhabitants,” announces a true paradigm shift in the way metropolitan development is conceived. To become a million-resident metropolis, the city and nature must coexist in every transformation project of the Bordeaux urban area. The concept 1 = 1 + 1 was born. Thus, no building project, no block project, no urban development or public space project, no territorial project can proceed without considering the development of nature. Without being limited by operational development boundaries, stakeholders can propose the creation or strengthening of natural spaces near the projects or, through solidarity, in struggling areas.

Bordeaux’s natural environment thus becomes ecological, serving as the foundation of a resilient city in the face of climate change. It is also social, as it fosters amenities and social connections. Finally, nature is economic, generating resources for the metropolis.

In this spirit, the Workshop proposes three complementary tools to define, guide, monitor, and facilitate green projects at the metropolitan scale:

• The Metropolitan Nature Charter, which carries a renewed vision, ensures a shared recognition among all stakeholders of the importance of nature for the future of the metropolis at various scales;

• The Metropolitan Nature Label encourages and supports project leaders through a collaborative and negotiation-based approach, facilitating the implementation of projects that integrate city and nature;

• New funding sources, essential to achieve the ambitions of metropolitan nature. Triggered through the labeling process, these funds—complementary to those provided by the metropolis—come from sponsorships, crowdfunding, or the solidarity-based contributions of urban developers within the metropolis, and feed into a “Bordeaux Nature Fund.”

To establish and oversee these tools, a Nature Development Agency (NDA), along with a strengthened nature-based governance structure, is proposed. It enables the mobilization of all territorial stakeholders around a new way of thinking and acting for the development of the metropolis.