Parc Rosa Bonheur

Parc Rosa Bonheur is a 2.4-hectare ecological park developed within the second phase of the Rives de la Haute-Deûle regeneration. Created on a former polluted industrial site, the project takes the spontaneous vegetation and biodiversity that had colonised the abandoned land as the starting point for its design, reversing the conventional logic of urban renewal by allowing existing ecological systems to structure the transformation.

The park combines restored soils, wetlands, rain gardens, planted swales, protected biodiversity areas and community gardens within a continuous public landscape. Its hydrological strategy is based on a gravity-fed, “zero-pipe” system in which rainwater remains visible and is infiltrated entirely on site, while more than 150 existing trees have been preserved and around 250 additional trees planted. In this sense, Rosa Bonheur is less a decorative green space than a piece of urban ecological infrastructure, reconnecting post-industrial land with living systems, public use and the wider evolution of the district.