More on Royalmount and its shortcomings
I’m puzzled why, two days after a Radio-Canada report on changes and improvements made in the plans for the Royalmount project – hailed on this blog by indefatigable cheerleader Faiz Imam – CTV reports on a citizen initiative to push for more green space, affordable housing and more public transit. Are the Carbonleo promises not enough, or is there fear that they’re just smoke and mirrors?
ant6n 22:13 on 2019-08-24 Permalink
The Website by Carbonleo about this project starts with a giant aerial photo of the 15-40 interchange with the project area marked next to it, and follows with this text, which makes me feel like, just by reading it, that I’m joining whatever cult Faiz is part of:
“””Royalmount was born of a desire to create a unifying, eco-friendly and innovative living environment that reflects the best of Montreal.
Located in Town of Mount Royal (TMR) at the intersection of highways 15 and 40, this carbon-neutral neighbourhood will be a source of revitalization for one of Montreal’s largest heat islands. The mission of Royalmount village is to repair the crumbling infrastructure that has for decades geographically divided the cities and neighbourhoods on the western part of the island from the rest of the city. Rooted in today’s realities while answering the needs of tomorrow, Royalmount will have their residents’ well-being at the heart of its mission.
Challenging convention, it will be an inspiring urban cultural hub designed on a human scale. Royalmount will offer the quintessential Montreal experience: a dynamic, diverse culture with restaurants, boutiques, green spaces, hotels, lounge areas and offices, while at the same time embracing the best technological practices for the environment, sustainable development, and green mobility.”””
I don’t believe in private entities designing supposedly utopic mini-villages next to highways. At what point did we privatize urban development, and deeply steep it in shallow PR? (I guess some time before we privatized transit planning..)
These villages are basically arcologies, and in some sense descendants of developments like the brutalist Bonaventure building – a sort of mini-city within the city, that is unconcerned with whatever is surrounding it, because it’s basically a fortress (The Bonaventure is a literal one built with walls, the highway-interchange villages are less obvious ones, but must still protect their interior greenwashing spaces from the adjacent highways).
But to be fair, there’s a metro station a couple hundred meters away, so they do have that covered…
Douglas 06:45 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
Carbonleo’s new proposal looks fine. They are just trying to please more people.
Once it is built, all the arguments against it will look hyperbolic. Like the end of the world is happening on decarie and 40.
A huge development project for Montreal which will bring in even more tax revenues to the city.
Pay for a lot of construction salaries which is good for montreal and quebec economy.
Everyone benefits to be honest.
Uatu 08:51 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
The more community input the better since they’re going to be living with the development daily and putting up with the mundane headaches that pr gloss over like garbage collection, delivery traffic, parking, road maintenance, groundskeeping,/snow removal etc. Also better to have carbon Leo plan the space better because DIX30’s layout is a haphazardly strewn out shitshow of buildings and roads that no one knows how to navigate. Parts of the DIX30 are dead and are going through reconstruction which means detours and traffic in an already confined space. Will Royal Mount be the same? Does it have the space to remake structures and layout without causing even more traffic to the area? Nobody thinks about these things because they’re too distracted by PR drawings and tax$$$. Just like people only later wonder why elevators are just now being installed in the metro….
Kevin 09:04 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
Douglas
Just to point out the obvious: This development is not in Montreal and will provide no tax revenue to the city.
Uatu 09:08 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
That pr text also reads like someone fed “Royalmount is….” into that AI in the previous post
EmilyG 14:58 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
“Royalmount is a Montreal city and a condos. It will be built in 1999 in Eastern Mount Royal. Mount Royal is a mountain with a population of 3 million tourists every summer between January and March.”
(Me having a crack at writing in the style of an AI.”
Phil M 15:36 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
Has anyone actually proposed anything better, that developers are willing to build? It seems the alternative is to let the area continue to deteriorate. And since it has been pointed out that the land is in TMR, and not Montreal, it begs the question what kind of urban planning resources TMR has at its disposal. From their point of view, it’s a win win win. If the Plateau gets to block cars from passing through it, it seems only fair that TMR fgets to redevelop a dying area.
Kate 22:37 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
Phil M, what exactly does “deteriorate” mean here?
I don’t think there have been counterproposals. But since Montreal has no say in what TMR does with this land, TMR can choose whatever developer they like. It’s not as if Montreal has a great recent track record to show off in creating new neighbourhoods: the public meetings held over Griffintown were a joke, and the redevelopment of the Children’s Hospital block showed us how developers get what they want. The city’s had no clout in insisting on the inclusion of social housing, let alone space for schools, libraries or other public facilities.
I can only hope Plante & Co. can keep more of an eye on what happens around the Molson brewery site when it comes to redevelopment.
ant6n 00:18 on 2019-08-26 Permalink
Well, if the city sells the whole Molson site as as whole to some billion dollar developer, we’ll get another mega-development (right next to the Radio Canada mega development). I don’t get why they can’t come up with a basic urban plan, subdivide the large site, maybe be imposing a human-scale street-grid, adding basic services, and then sell off the lots for each building individually, rezoned, including developer rights. It could create a somewhat more organic city (if that’s at all possible if so much is built at once), while optimizing for public rather than private concerns.
Kate 13:04 on 2019-08-26 Permalink
ant6n, you raise a good point: why the need to give a site to a single developer? We’d get more variety if it wasn’t being done this way.
Ephraim 13:10 on 2019-08-26 Permalink
Kevin, just to correct you, Mont-Royal pays 51.8 per cent of their tax into the agglomeration. So actually, Montreal gets the lion’s share of city taxes in TMR.
ant6n 22:47 on 2019-08-26 Permalink
Well the agglo isn’t just Montreal, and TMR must be getting something from that agglo pool as well, so TMR likely still gets the lion’s share. Id say it’s a pretty good deal for them having this development in what is essentially an exclave, most of the impact (and prob plenty of he cost) will be on Montreal
Faiz Imam 20:57 on 2019-08-28 Permalink
Looking back at my comment from the other post, I stand by most of what I said, though I do think I was a bit too joyous about it.
This new plans is better, but instead of an absolute catastrophe for the city its now in the “decent but flawed” realm along with any number of other projects around the city.
Is that worth celebrating? I think so, but I’m still in support of anyone who wants to keep pushing it to be even better, like any negotiation, any offer is less than they are ultimately willing to accept.