Since the 1960s, the Jarret has evoked the city’s bypass road in Marseille. However, the Jarret is a river, coming from the Etoile massif and flowing into the Huveaune. Busted since the major infrastructure works of 1955, it has disappeared from the Marseilles landscape to make way for a wide, busy, congested, and noisy road, with 6 lanes of traffic but reduced and congested pavements.
The opportunity of the complete requalification of the Jarret was to radically transform the ring road into an urban boulevard by deploying a strategy of reclaiming public spaces based on the development of new uses.
To do this, the project tends to erase the road stigma: removal of the central reservation, modification of the crossroads by eliminating the pierced roundabout, creation of wide pavements and a cycle track, increase in the number of pedestrian crossings, generous planting, soft mobility infrastructures encouraging active modes of transport and extensive re-vegetation. Thus, a large majority of trees have been preserved, and many tree bases have been revegetated to increase the vegetation.