The prevailing urban water management systems treat stormwater as a nuisance to be channelled away from cities; however, cities need water to maintain a green urban environment and for local cooling, and rainwater retention helps to eliminate droughts and flooding caused by climate change. Les Ateliers Ublo supports the creation of blue-green alleys to achieve better participatory stormwater management in Montreal. To this end, it created an alliance of urban actors and acquired funding for a pilot project. Implementing the pilot project posed numerous challenges, however. This case analyzes the various processes at play in participatory sustainability innovations and the complex roles of researchers and changemakers in such innovation processes.

• Understand and analyze conscientization, conciliation, and collaboration processes in participatory urban sustainability innovation
• Analyze the roles of researchers and changemakers in innovation processes, including the tension between those roles
• Increase the environmental literacy of students with respect to a major sustainability challenge – urban stormwater management – and its relation to climate change and land use.