Montpellier Metropolitan Area

Cultivating resilience: agroecological land management for a thriving Montpellier.

Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole (3M), located on the Mediterranean coast, covers 44,000 hectares across 31 municipalities and is home to 507,000 inhabitants. Over the past 50 years, the region has experienced rapid demographic growth and significant urban sprawl. The metropolitan area is divided into three main landscapes: one-third urban, one-third natural (dominated by garrigue and wetlands near coastal lagoons), and one-third agricultural (primarily vineyards, along with field crops).

Soil and Planning Challenges

Land take has been a persistent challenge since the 1960s, though its pace has slowed since 2006. In recent years, land consumption has been driven primarily by the expansion of transport infrastructure (highways, railways) and economic developments (warehouses, offices). While efforts to densify urban areas have helped limit soil sealing from new housing, open spaces continue to face significant challenges. These include mitigating the growing risks of climate hazards such as droughts, heavy rainfall, floods, wildfires, and heatwaves; preventing biodiversity loss; protecting water resources; and improving access to healthy, locally sourced food.

Soil and Planning Opportunities

The metropolitan authority, 3M, oversees a broad range of public policies, including urban planning, environmental management, transport, economic development, housing, and social cohesion. Recent updates to urban planning documents, such as the 2019 Strategic Metropolitan Master Plan (SCoT) and the ongoing Inter-Municipal Local Urban Plan (PLUi), prioritise densifying designated urban areas while reclassifying certain zones for long-term preservation as agricultural and natural spaces. The national Zero Net Land Take (ZAN) law presents an opportunity to further strengthen the protection of open spaces, with a particular focus on agroecology.

Ambition for the SPADES project

Within the SPADES project, 3M aims to strengthen the integration of soil preservation into spatial planning by co-designing and implementing agroecological management plans for public open spaces. These plans, developed through a participatory process, will initially focus on publicly owned land. Drawing on landscape ecology principles, 3M envisions:

Reorganising land parcels to optimise land use and ecological benefits.
Restoring hedges and other agroecological infrastructures to enhance biodiversity.
Transitioning farming systems towards agroecology and agroforestry to improve sustainability.

A key challenge is balancing the multifunctionality of soils—supporting food production, ecological preservation, biodiversity, risk management, and carbon storage—while assessing the potential and limitations of different public lands. Overcoming the divide between agriculture and nature is crucial, particularly as Montpellier 3M is a biodiversity hotspot, home to two-thirds of the species identified in France.

The project's innovation lies in integrating existing thematic plans related to open spaces and soil management while co-designing agroecological management plans through collaboration with stakeholders from various soil-related domains. This holistic approach ensures that environmental, agricultural, and societal needs are addressed in a sustainable and coordinated manner.