How the pandemic is shaping the city
Some thoughts from managers of SDCs about how the pandemic has changed the use of public space and may have accelerated an already existing trend to offer more space to pedestrians around commercial streets.
Some merchants and residents in Hochelaga want this summer’s pedestrianization of Ontario Street to go further than planned.
DeWolf 13:50 on 2021-03-07 Permalink
What’s happening on Ontario seems to be a reflection of a divide that exists on many streets: cafés, bars and restaurants want pedestrianization because they can install extra large terrasses, whereas many retail stores don’t want to lose parking.
I wonder if the stores that oppose pedestrianization actually have data on how their customers get there, or if they’re making assumptions based on the store owner’s preferred mode of transport. I can see streets like St-Laurent being a major destination for people from all over the city, but Ontario? Who drives there from outside the neighbourhood to go shopping?
Kate 15:27 on 2021-03-07 Permalink
DeWolf, I can’t find a link for the moment, but there was a recent study that showed most people shopping on Mont-Royal when it was pedestrianized in the summer were from the local area, and had simply walked over. I’ll pop a link in when I find it.
DeWolf 18:32 on 2021-03-07 Permalink
Yes, I remember that. But I think it was actually a study of the street pre-pandemic, which showed that, even in normal times, only about 10% of people got there by car.
steph 11:48 on 2021-03-08 Permalink
St-Laurent/St-Denis/Mt-Royal/Duluth used to have their cach/ value when they were the only streets of that type in the region. Now we have Masson, Wellington, Ontario etc that fulfil the same needs. Shopping on St-Catherine (which used to have the exclusive boutique stores) has similarly been killed by the Dix30 & Carrefour Laval/Balinvilles being build everywhere. What used to be exclusive to the city, is far from exclusive anymore. No one drives to these places anymore – parking ISN”T what killed it.
Kate 14:55 on 2021-03-08 Permalink
Right. So here’s my question. Montreal is having growing pains, obviously. We used to be a city with a single commercial nucleus, around Ste-Catherine, and now we’ve got a bunch, some on older neighbourhood main streets, as steph says here, and some major malls. This didn’t happen overnight. There are photos showing St-Hubert as a glitzy, neon-spangled main street from the 1940s onward. Norgate, generally regarded as the oldest mall in town, opened in 1950 near what’s now Côte-Vertu metro.
What I want to know is: did London, Paris, Hong Kong, New York, other big cities, suffer this much as they got bigger? Is there some psychological barrier here to do with being an island, and things being clearly demarcated as on or off the island? Or is it that those older, bigger cities simply got big before the car was the dominant force in civic life?
Kevin 00:34 on 2021-03-09 Permalink
I could write an essay about Manhattan and New York and the ease of driving and owning a car, and the highrise apartments with courtyard BBQs and splashpads, and the total mixed-use buildings, and go on for pages.
I think it’s a city in a constant state of flux, with developers snapping up multiple buildings in order to tear them down and build new, because there is no other place to build.
Montreal has been largely stagnant for decades. It’s flailed around with strict zoning, corruption, the failed merger and demerger, and a provincial government that thwarts it at every turn.
And it’s surrounded by empty space everywhere you look.
Those other cities are places where geography is constrained and where people with power want things to work. Montreal is not that lucky.