Some lists for the new year
A QMI writer talked to a couple of urbanism experts about the top five best and top five worst projects in the urban area currently. Not all my readers will agree with all these opinions, but the piece is worth a read.
Marian Scott at the Gazette lists ways in which the pandemic will shape the city, how we work, buy and live. Interesting takeaway: only roughly four in ten jobs can be done from home. The majority of jobs are hands-on.
Photos of 2020 from CBC.
JP Karwacki ends 2020 with a toast to Montreal.
DeWolf 13:26 on 2021-01-02 Permalink
A few thoughts on that QMI list:
Royalmount is definitely deserves its place at the top of the list. As it is currently conceived it’s a terrible project.
They don’t really give any good reasons to oppose the densification of Nun’s Island. The Pointe Nord is already quite dense, and the rezoning on the other side is focused on the commercial area, which is currently a suburban mess of giant parking lots and strip malls. As far as I’m aware, nobody is talking about demolishing existing housing.
It feels a bit disingenuous to include Ste-Catherine on the bad list when it received nothing but praise from the experts – except for the lack of heated sidewalks, which as we know was Coderre’s pet project. I also agree that heated sidewalks would have been good, but at the same time I have no doubt that if they had been built, QMI’s pundits would be howling with outrage at the high cost and inevitably technical difficulties.
Funny to see the REV on the good list when it was the target of so much orchestrated QMI outrage. Not surprisingly many of the critics are coming around now that they can see how much it has improved the atmosphere on St-Denis. My only qualm with the REV is its branding. Réseau express vélo makes it sound like it’s full of lycra-clad road warriors, but it’s just the opposite, because it’s designed for ordinary people going relatively slowly, not somebody who wants to zoom down the street at 40 km/h on their $5,000 bike.
Strange to see the Place Simon-Valois on this list since it’s already several years old. That said, it really is a good square.
Including the Triangle on the good list but Griffintown on the bad list makes no sense to me. Griffintown is a bit of a mess, but the city is doing good remedial work to build parks and redesign streets to be more pedestrian-friendly. And dare I say it, but the somewhat chaotic nature of its development has resulted in an eclectic urban form with more variety than if it had been master planned. Once the dust settles I think it will be a fairly interesting area. By contrast, development in the Triangle is more tightly managed, and yet it feels very bland and vaguely suburban. All the buildings have setbacks with useless grassy patches and the architecture is just as ugly as in Griffintown. It’s not terrible but I certainly wouldn’t highlight it as an urban planning success story.
Kevin 14:32 on 2021-01-02 Permalink
The Gazette article with its experts from around the globe is quite chilling.
I have been hearing similar viewpoints over the past year but I can no longer hope otherwise: downtown Montreal as we knew it is dead and gone.
All the infrastructure, zoning decisions, lifestyle choices, the corruption, that made the core a region of office workers commuting from the ‘burbs was overlooked until the pandemic laid it bare: the city has hollowed out.
Kate 14:33 on 2021-01-02 Permalink
Kevin: has it, though? What about the trend for so many new residential condo towers right in the heart of downtown?
DeWolf 18:45 on 2021-01-02 Permalink
Montreal has never had a one-dimensional downtown. Unless you think the universities and colleges will shut down, 150,000 people will abandon their downtown apartments, all festivals will be cancelled forever, and nobody is ever going to take public transit again, downtown will be just fine.
There’s a lot of conjecture in that Gazette article that isn’t going to age well. Newspaper archives are full of prognosticating about the future of cities that looks ridiculous in hindsight. Even in the Gazette article, the experts interviewed are all contradicting each other. One says that street-level retail is going to be wiped out. Another points out that neighbourhood shops have actually seen an increase in business during the pandemic.
There will be people who are so traumatized by the pandemic that they will move to the countryside and forever avoid any kind of crowded situation, but I suspect that most people will go back to their old urban habits, as they have consistently done through history.
PO 20:59 on 2021-01-02 Permalink
Kevin : with all due respect, what the hell are you talking about? Look at ANY other city in North America with a population of ~2 million and tell me downtown Montreal is dead. I couldn’t disagree with you more. I’m too young to give any perspective as to how it compares to decades before I was born, but as far as 2020 goes, I challenge you to name a city this size on this continent (and there are plenty) that can even come close to Montreal.
Michael Black 21:57 on 2021-01-02 Permalink
It’s premature to make a forecast. People can extrapolate from now, but there are lots of variables.
But I suspect our image of downtown wasn’t accurate. Growing up, it was medical appointments and deparment stores, and Classic Books, and the Santa Claus parade. Or a place to walk through on the way to Victoria Square. So I thought of it as a destination. Now all these stories are saying it’s business,, and the restaurants and stores are support. So maybe it does depend on whether work from home is a glitch, or permanent.
I used to go to the department stores, habit maybe, but now only The Bay remains, and it’s less a department store than more expensive clothing and furniture. I like walking along St. Catherine street, but between Guy and University, Indigo is the only thing that really matters. Well Laura Secord, they’ve closed a lot of stores in recent years. I stopped going to movies 20 years ago when they closed the smaller theatres for the really big plexes. The rent is too high for diversity, but to me it’s a bland street other than the people. If business was the anchor, tnere go the crowds
Art isn’t made at Place des Arts, it’s perforned to an audience around there. It’s created elsewhere, where rent is affordable.When the festivals were small, they were something to take in, once large, they became targets. I’m not sure art draws people, at least not without other reasipons to be down there.
People have always lived downtown, just not so visible. The grocery stores have been mostly at the western end, the Provigo now gone. But there’s little green space, and no playgrounds. In fifty years, a lot of grass has been lost at PdA and around Place Bonaventure, people used to flock to tye grass at lunch hour.
A lot has built up in fifty years, some of it may have to come down if business doesn’t return. It can’t be dense residential without green space.
Kevin 22:10 on 2021-01-02 Permalink
Kate:
I don’t think the condo towers make up for the hundreds of thousands of missing office workers. At least not in the next 5-10 years.
DeWolf:
They aren’t contradicting each other, but are instead describing a shift in how people are living and spending. Retail strips in neighbourhoods with a good residential mix are thriving while areas that rely on office workers are struggling.
PO:
I guess you don’t remember the 90s…
Montreal has more workers living further away from the city core than anywhere except Toronto, and a lot of people living 25 km+ away. If they have been telecommuting they have no reason to come back.
That is the change I’m talking about.
Festivals? They are great if you’re already downtown, but if you’ve moved to Hudson or have spent 9 months working from your chalet, will you come to town every day to watch jazz?
I know for many people the answer is no. People who have spent 20 years commuting from the burbs and can now stop? It’s an environmental amazement, but it is going to require a massive change to ensure our city survives.
DeWolf 22:46 on 2021-01-02 Permalink
That’s absolutely true, there will be changes. I’m not saying things will simply revert to how they were before 2020. Businesses that cater to office workers will die because even after the pandemic, offices won’t be quite as full as they were before. But that will gradually be offset by the increase in downtown residents. And I think the REM will help keep the connection to the suburbs alive, if only because people like the experience of being downtown (including festivals) and it’s much easier to partake in that if you can hop on a frequent train instead of driving for 45 minutes and worrying about parking.
In any case, don’t forget that even if the whole metropolitan area is sprawling, Montreal is quite densely populated and there is about a million people who live within 10km of downtown.
Tim F 12:47 on 2021-01-03 Permalink
I suspect there will be a new normal—a reversion toward the mean but not a full return to the baseline in 2019. On one hand, middle management craves control, creatives crave the synergy and serendipity of a shared workspace, IT will be told to cut costs, employees want camaraderie. Execs, on the other hand, will be happy to save while outsourcing office footprint, heating costs etc. to their employees, and employees will want to retain the flexibility and new quality time they gained from not commuting. I can envisage some companies finding a new equilibrium where office space is reduced and more communal, where employees rotate and come in once or twice a week for team meetings and project work.