The city is planning to study the option of running the downtown section of the REM underground rather than ramming an elevated track through that part of the city. Whether they could get Quebec to comply is another matter.
Updates from January, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Without any general announcement, Quebec has lightened up on religious institutions, allowing services again so long as no more than ten people attend. Since January 8, only very small funerals had been permitted. La Presse spliced in a public service ad that ended with “Il faut respecter toutes les règles, tout le temps.” Unless you’re going to church, I guess.
jeather
And yet we’re not allowed to go for outdoor walks with people.
GC
And, of course, Quebec is “secular”. *eyeroll*
Mark Côté
Funerals have been capped at 25 throughout the last few months, and that excludes employees conducting the funeral.
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Kate
I’m sure it will be a relief to all of us to know that the city has regained its certificate testifying that it conforms to Bill 101.
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Kate
The Clinique juridique itinérante is going to court to fight Quebec’s imposition of curfew on the homeless.
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Kate
Christopher Curtis puts a human face on the curfew’s impact on the homeless.
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Kate
QMI explains why in some locations bike paths are cleared better than sidewalks.
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Kate
On Le Devoir, an urban planner writes about living in Montreal being a privilege largely because the city has limited the density of buildings – an argument championed by one of my regular readers, as I’m well aware. But Laurent Howe, on describing the existing density of Villeray’s rows of duplexes and triplexes, also fails to explain how you delete them and replace them with rows of higher buildings allowing for denser habitation. You would need to demolish not just a few houses, but entire sections of the inner part of the city, because the footprint of a highrise will not fit on these streets. Putting up highrises on such narrow streets would create an intolerable living situation.
qatzelok
There is a new condo complex on the corner of Lajeunesse and Sauvé that is only 4 stories high.
It’s a block from the métro. This makes no sense unless our city wants fewer people living near transit.
Jonathan
I think about this subject very often. Montreal’s built envelop was developed at a time when residential density was much, much higher. Commercial spaces existed to serve a much denser population and a much less mobile population. My grandmother was born just down the street from me in Villeray. She lived in a 5 1/2 with 12 of her siblings. They were a poor immigrant family but nonetheless had a very limited footprint in terms of where they would have gone to spend their money.
Today we have almost the exact same building envelop in Villeray, but with single people living in 3 1/2s, childless couples in 5 1/2s and plexes converted into single-family homes. Many of them have cars now and so drive to Marche Centrale or elsewhere to buy their provisions. That means we have a hell of a lot more commercial space to resident.
In terms of increasing or preserving a certain level of density I think there is an arsenal of different policies that could help: limiting the conversions of plexes into single family homes, building slightly more dense infill, allowing for denser building along wide commercial streets (including addition of floors), allow the conversion of alley sheds into granny flats, etc
mare
I think 4 stories is the max in many boroughs. You also need to install elevators if you go higher and those require maintenance and add to the cost (of rent/condo fees). As an armchair city planner it would be good to have higher buildings on corners, with mixed use (artist/artisan studios, an arch with sheltered social gathering areas with benches and stairs, small stores) on the ground floor, to connect the street with the building. Right now the ground floors of condo buildings are large generic stores with big window panes in aluminium. If there was more variation in insets and nooks and crannies it would be more lively.
Thomas H
With the exception of a few remarkable exceptions (e.g., the Guy-Concordia vicinity, St. Jamestown in Toronto), most of the densest neighbourhoods in Canada are ‘medium’ density neighbourhoods exactly like Villeray, Parc-Extension, or the Plateau. The reason for this is pretty simple: nearly 100% of the building footprints in these neighbourhoods are occupied residential spaces. When you begin building much higher than three or four stories, a larger share of the building footprint has to be occupied by utilities (e.g., elevator shafts, staircases, HVAC systems, etc.). You have to build exceptionally tall buildings at very large scale to achieve the density of some ordinary blocks in Villeray. And even then, these types of residences are only suitable or desireable for certain types of people.
So Kate, you are right to note, in my opinion, that most of Montreal simply doesn’t have the available land and block sizes to accomodate these types of residences. What is needed is more duplexes and triplexes throughout the entire city, not just the most central areas, and rapid expansion of transit to serve them. A simple law banning the conversion of buildings (e.g., from triplex to duplex, or from duplex to a single family home) on top of incentives for developers to modestly add one or two units to existing buildings could easily accommodate another half million to million residents on the Island in the next two decades.
ant6n
Attacking some of the densest neighborhoods of Montreal as not being dense enough, while the metropolis is sprawling, is a very silly exercise. We want more areas that are dense enough, walkable, have good quality of live and transit access. Those should be the goals, not more skyscrapers in the city giving you a good view of the sprawl outside.
The distance argument doesn´t get very far either. With good transit, even areas outside the center can be well connected. For example, with the REM, much of Brossard will be 15-20 minutes from downtown – yet the density is poor. Similar for Longueil.
And on the island there`s plenty of space left to develop, empty areas, brownfields, decaying industrial land, etc. etc.
To back this up with numbers: The Plateau has a density of 13K/km2 (2/3 story buildings). Residential areas inside Manhattan have 20K-30K (towers and dark canyons, lack of green). Residential areas in Berlin have 10-15K (with mostly 4/5 story buildings). Suburban areas of Montreal may have 1-2K, some are higher like in Longueil. Walkable areas that work with transit need densities of 5K-10K.
qatzelok
I agree that medium height – high density is the way to go for quality neighborhoods that make sense. But in Montreal, this means that Sauvé metro should have 8 to 12 story buidling inserted into the grid where possible. There are many bungalows near Sauvé. This makes no urban sense.
And there are many examples of this in Homa, Sud-ouest, etc. Little Burgundy is a tragedy in its lack of density.
DeWolf
There are a lot of good points in this thread.
There’s no need to demolish any existing structures in already dense neighbourhoods like the Plateau or Villeray, but as qatzelok points out, there are so many empty spaces that can be redeveloped (auto mechanics, vacant lots, single-storey commercial blocks) and this is where we should be putting 7-10 storey buildings, not duplexes. This isn’t a radical suggestion – it’s already reality in Rosemont along Molson Street and des Carrières, or in Villeray just south of Jarry Park. But somehow there are prime spots next to metro stations that are still being developed as basic triplexes because that’s all the zoning allows.
As I said before in response to the Berri Square development, people often praise the Plateau for the liveable density enabled by duplexes and triplexes, but they gloss over the fact that the Plateau’s building stock is the most diverse in the city. There is a baseline of plexes, but there are also hundreds of 4-5 storey apartment buildings (some built a century ago, but most from the 1950s and 60s) as well no small number of high-rises. That diversity of building types is what gives the Plateau is density, texture and variety.
We should also consider legalizing backyard carriage houses. Many inner neighbourhoods like Hochelaga and Rosemont have very deep backyards with enough space both for parked cars and green space. Put an apartment above those parking spots and you’re increasing the density without affecting the existing built environment.
As ant6n notes, though, what’s most important is densifying the inner ring of suburbs. There are bungalows within walking distance of many metro stations. These are the areas that need to be redeveloped with more intensive housing. If property owners in Ville-Sant-Laurent or Longueuil were allowed to replace their bungalow with a Villeray-style triplex, we’d do more to create dense, sustainable neighbourhoods than if we bulldoze existing parts of the Plateau or plop random high-rises around the suburbs.
david461
All of these points are good, aside from the ludicrous idea that building Brossard or some other similar place is a feasible alternative to building more in the place people actually want to live.
The best points of course are that the beloved Plateau neighborhoods already have a bunch of denser-than-triplex housing, and that there’s still an enormous amount of room for intensification in all of the most popular and expensive core Montreal hoods. Off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen potential sites just off Rachel street around the Banquise. It’s really about the form new construction must take.
Of course I’ve been harping here and everywhere else for many years about all the various things we can do to keep rents and property prices down on both the regulatory and supply sides. But if people who are now suddenly keying into the enormity of the problem we have, and want to get behind something both easy and quick, citywide legalization of ADUs or laneway housing or whatever you want to call it (here it’s unités d’habitation accessoires or UHA) is probably the most realistic supply side move to slightly arrest ever escalating housing costs.
ADUs or UHAs take advantage of the ludicrous lot size requirements and ubiquity or rear lanes/alleys to ‘gently’ intensify neighborhoods – basically, you build another structure on the rear drive or yard. These are still basically illegal and would generally be legalized under my basic program of barring (1) setback requirements: (2) lot coverage maximums; (3) height limits (someone made the excellent point above that building codes being what they are, even without height maximums, the cost of construction will mean that we get highrises only where the demand for high cost housing exists . . . though if we don’t act to nuke with our current anti-growth policies, prices could spiral so high that most neighborhoods would fit the bill); (4) parking requirements; (5) front ingress requirements (ie. can enter from the rear lane); (6) lot line windows; and (7) open space requirements. However, specific pro-ADU/UHA legislation would likely be much more likely to get through, and the impacts would be mostly invisible and slow to emerge, generally mooting the perpetual veto point of crazies howling about the destruction of their neighborhood in all but the most sophisticated and well organized anti-growth hoods (I’m thinking Outremont here).
So, while I’ll still tout my basic program, and all the regulatory moves (barring the merger of units, as mentioned, is a great one, for instance), if people want a nice, friendly pro-housing policy, jump on ADU/UHAs!
david461
On the question of transit oriented development around existing metro stations with neighborhoods built out, it’s another great one and totally obvious, but it runs smack into the same problems as regular development. The incumbents owners want to keep their property values high on the artificial land shortage, the incumbent renters want to keep the neighborhood looking like it did when they moved in, and the alliance between the two (whose interests generally are adverse in a fundamental way) blocks progress at the political level. No rezoning where it’s not wanted, even when you have defunct service stations or industrial lots or other brownfield sites.
Without a big change in thinking or, please be, provincial intervention, I just don’t see how we get, say, a bunch of towers around Lionel Groulx or Jean Talon stations, among the best places for them in all of the city.
Since this has officially entered ‘rant’ terrain, I’ll also remark that many people are very concerned with all the symptoms of this corrupt bargain (whether housing cost directly or the impacts in terms of environmental impact, racial issues, etc), but either misidentify the root cause of the problem (ie. most lay people) or simply don’t have the kamikaze spirit to take it on directly (ie. most politicians). So, the symptoms continue to worsen, and will not let up absent some exogenous event (sovereignty referendum, another pandemic that stops immigration cold, etc).
That said, it really is heartening to see that so many people are grasping the scale, effects, and nature of the artificial land shortage here. Hopefully I can emerge from being a sort of Fox Mulder-type figure, who people either don’t believe at all and laugh out of the room (or know to be correct and vociferously denounce and ridicule because they’re in on the conspiracy “it would tank property values”), and see these arguments form part of a real political platform like they have recently in the US and Vancouver.
Ephraim
Even in the realm of low (2 story) housing and townhouses, there are ways to build better than the older single family homes. The standard width for this now is about 6m wide. You run row houses, parking/garage under, gardens behind, central courtyard. 2 sets facing each other. This was done in a few places… Cote-St-Luc on Wallenberg (6700 area) and St-Laurent in Bois-Franc, like on St-Exupery (just don’t let him get into a plane… you may never find him again.)
Not the best density, but better density.
david461
You know, another thing I’ll add is that PM is making a huge mistake in another fundamental area.
Generally, locking down most housing construction in the core neighborhoods is pushing prices so high that apartment towers in Ville Marie are becoming feasible, the high rents more than justifying the construction costs. While the condo market is a different bird, we’ve seen the results of high home costs in the rapid development of various new hoods or sub-hoods (QdS, Bell Center, Cabot Square/Shaughnessy Village, Faubourg des Récollets, Griffintown, the old postal canal adjacent yards), the potential for development in others (Phillips Square, Saint Jacques, the CBC tower/Molson area), and a bunch of infill along the way. Without the exorbitant costs of the Plateau and all the rest, we just don’t have the volume of construction we do in all these areas, everything considered.
As dumb as it is to let costs spiral so high, it’s even dumber to look at the spillover from that decision (ie. our the construction of higher cost units downtown), and decide that you should tax it!
Think of it. I restrict the importation of pork, so the price of beef goes way up, so then I tell the beef growers that for every 2.5 head of cattle they bring to the market, they must also provide me with one gratis, because they’re just greedy beef growers, and I can’t afford to buy my beef on the market I’ve created.
Alison Cummins
Looking forward, people need a little less space for Stuff than they did just a few years ago. When nobody had televisions or sound systems, no space was required for them. Then… radios. The hi-fi. Record collections. Blocky televisions in every room. Entertainment centres. Offices with storage for lots of paper. Bookshelves overflowing with books.
Much of that has been replaced with personal hand-held computers. My niece doesn’t even need space for a flat-screen: she watches tv with her friends with a projector on the wall. With enough built-in storage the need for furniture goes way down.
As fossil fuel becomes more expensive we will start exporting more electricity, which will become more expensive in turn. People will want smaller spaces that are cheaper to heat.
Towers over the major metro stations make a lot of sense as long as there’s green space somewhere to open up the area. Duplexes and triplexes are not desirable for everyone, especially as we age.
I would have no issue with changing zoning to allow 4- and 5-storey buildings with no elevators. (We won’t do it, but I have fantasies of adding a 4th floor to our triplex to create small apartments suitable for families.)
I’m much less keen on eradicating light industry. When you do that, all you’re left with is a bedroom community, commuters and consumer retail. This is what leads to doughnuts, as workplaces move to cheap land outside the city, employees move to where the work is and property values in the inner city drop. Unless we preserve spaces for a diversity of employers throughout the city, liveability is vulnerable.
Yes, Rosemont métro is nicely built up. But at the expense of all the light-industry spaces along the railroad tracks and the small businesses that served them. Now it’s just condos full of people who need to use the metro to get to work unless they’re working from home.
[begin ranting apocalyptic mode]
Remember peak oil? It’s still a thing. We’re working on other sources of energy but it’s all going to cost more in the future than it does now. That means imports will cost more because transportation will cost more. This is relevant to Quebec because we have more hydro than anywhere else on our continent.
I’m expecting light industry and manufacturing to pick up again. Maybe not to where it was fifty years ago, but you know… up. If we’re going car-free, this industry will need to be close to workers.
[end ranting apocalyptic mode]
Raymond Lutz
Let’s pile up this thread! 😎 I was waiting for something to add… Thanks, Alison!
«[oil] is going to cost more»
No, not according to Gail Tverberg:
«Ultimate customers are ordinary wage earners, and their wages are not escalating as rapidly as fossil fuel production and delivery costs. It is the low selling price of fossil fuels, relative to the rising cost of production, that causes a collapse in the production of fossil fuels. This is the crisis we are now facing.»
“Peak oil” should be “Peak easy oil”… There’s enough proven reserved of unconventional oil to cook us to death (fracking, tar sands, high sea…)
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Kate
It’s one year since Dr Horacio Arruda gave his first presser about the new coronavirus.
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Kate
La Presse editorialist Philippe Mercure writes about the police practice of fining the destitute, which has been shown to be on the rise despite François Legault’s trust in the good sense of the police (good luck) and vows made by city hall to curtail the practice. It sounds like something out of Dickens or Victor Hugo, a cruel idea that should have been shut down decades ago but, in fact, continues to spread.
Update: QMI says the researchers discovered that more than 50,000 tickets were given out to homeless people between 2012 and 2019.
Joey
“L’idée n’est pas de blâmer les policiers, qui font un métier difficile dans des circonstances complexes. Le SPVM n’est d’ailleurs pas resté les bras croisés. Il dispose d’équipes spéciales dédiées à l’itinérance et aux urgences psychosociales. Des formations ont été données, des plans stratégiques sur le profilage racial et social ont été adoptés.”
No, we certainly don’t want to blame the police, who we have just spent 14 paragraphs explaining have ignored all efforts to get them to stop this cruel and wasteful habit.
qatzelok
The police are there to enforce the laws that are made *by someone else*.
It’s important to address this *someone else* when the laws create atrocities.
And I don’t envy the police being required to enforce cruel laws – and there are many.
Alison Cummins
— La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.
(Anatole France, Le lys rouge, 1894)— In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
(Anatole France, The Red Lily, 1894)Raymond Lutz
Merci, MtlCWblg (et Alison) d’ainsi forcer mon instruction: je viens de découvrir Anatole France… Et contrairement à mon interprétation de la phrase citée ci-haut, il n’était pas du tout progressiste…Elle doit être lue au premier degré. 8-(
Au sujet de la Commune de Paris, il a écrit:
“Enfin le gouvernement du crime et de la démence pourrit à l’heure qu’il est dans les champs d’exécution.”
Je me demande si Paris confinée va fêter ce printemps le 150e de la Commune? 😎
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Kate
Here’s the weekend driving troubles.
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Kate
A water main break on de Lorimier near the bridge is affecting rush hour in that part of town. The mayor tweets that this pipe dates from 1882; the break is bad enough that the area around de Lorimier and Ontario is being evacuated.
Bill Binns 11:11 on 2021-01-23 Permalink
I can do the study for free. It will cost 42 bazillion trillion dollars and take 134 years to complete. Phase 1 is ten more studies which each take 2 years.
Marc R 01:48 on 2021-01-24 Permalink
@Bill I believe your conclusion, but doubt your methodology 🙂