Urbania on the fight for 700 Jarry West
Urbania looks at the community fight for 700 Jarry West, where a garage and the Murad Supermarché used to be. A developer wanted to redevelop the lot with a four-storey condo building that would bring the march of gentrification into northern Park Ex, but the community is fighting to get the lot for social housing.
David744 00:24 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
Ah yes, the political project that rejects the redevelopment of a strip mall into a whole bunch of housing (with replacement businesses) because of a pipe dream that the government will swoop in and give a bunch of non-workers free housing. Very logical for the literature majors, very illogical for the people who marshall resources.
Instead of this goofiness, let’s do way more housing to just get us back to the massive housing surplus we had when pretty much all of us grew up, which was what made this town so cheap and which created the culture we all love so much.
Raymond Lutz 07:36 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
Very logical for MSc in Physics too. And this summer we saw how good are the people who marshall (planetary) resources,,, Wearing a suit doesn’t give you a working brain, quite the opposite: ties cut the brain blood flow.
qatzelok 08:30 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
” let’s do way more housing to just get us back to the massive housing surplus we had when pretty much all of us grew up”
Property owners love homelessness and housing crises, because these things make them rich as their properties increase in value beyond what they are really worth.
Housing as a speculative commodity… leads to misery for many people.
CE 08:41 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
Literature majors? Really? Are you going for the uncle everyone rolls their eyes at during thanksgiving dinner vibe?
Ephraim 08:41 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
Yes, let’s have less housing, so that rents can go up. Supply and demand. Less condos, less apartments, higher rents…. and more people complaining about not being able to afford housing. It’s a vicious circle, not building more housing. More density, better planning, more green space (which is why you have to build taller and LEED, so the cost of ownership goes down as well. What ever we do, we need to build more housing, or the price of apartments will never stop it’s ever higher spiral.
Kate 09:41 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
I don’t believe the community wants fewer housing units there, just housing that the people who actually live in the area can access.
David, if you had any knowledge of the area, you would know that in no sense can the existing building be called a strip mall. That alone renders your criticism nugatory.
su 10:35 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
Population growth
policies favor middle class and upper middle class professionals as required to keep GDP growth rate above 2 % ( of which realestate and housing infrastructure are a major component). Given the finite square footage and limited unbuilt space of our city these situations are to be expected. It’s the economy.
Kate 10:50 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
But we can’t all be middle and upper middle class. When I read David I hear a background wail of “Why can’t everyone have the basic decency to be white and upper middle class?” It’s related to François Legault’s idea that Quebec should only welcome immigrants capable of getting middle management jobs of $50K and upwards.
su 11:06 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
Our employers are demanding middle class professional employees whether white or not. Back in the day we had more working class jobs available such as in the textile sector. Things have changed. David knows how our system works. The same economic system is creating the same housing crisis all over the “developed” world.
Ephraim 12:01 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
@su – of course it favours the middle class and upper class, they are 70% of the population and likely the lower-middle class, who are upwardly mobile you could include in that, so maybe 80% of the population is in that group.
That is why I said we need better planning. The planning in Montreal is dreadful. We need to move to taller buildings with more green space around. We may not need as much industrial space or commercial space as we used to. But we can use the green space. So taller, more green, very little asphalt…. which means cars and bikes get stored UNDER the building, preserving green space.
The other problem is that the city doesn’t or can’t use eminent domain to reclaim areas. The area of St-Laurent between Chabanel and Cremazie is a good example. There were not enough people in the neighbourhood for the stores and too much concrete. Now… some tall apartment buildings, parking under, LEED certified. Metro station isn’t too far, at Cremazie, easy highway access… could really change the area, bring in new life and new business in that little shopping centre. But you need eminent domain to take over the few commercial areas around there, rezone and redevelop. The parcels, once rezoned, could be sold on the market for a profit, too. Use the profit to buy social housing. Or keep 10% of the plots and have someone build the social housing.
Basically, we need to find a few strips, no far from the metro and on main streets and build a tall new neighbourhood into the area. The land near the metro stations is too dear for single level housing. We need more density in the area.
Kate 14:22 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
taller buildings with more green space around
Ephraim, history shows this doesn’t work. “Projects” of that kind have risen and fallen in American and British cities because – for whatever reason – people will live in them if they have to, but they don’t like it, and projects (“estates” in UK English) soon become crime-riddled and vandalized and eventually get demolished, if you’re lucky.
It’s probably one of the top examples of plans that can look good on paper but don’t work out at all in real life.
Jonathan 14:50 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
building taller buildings with parking underneath does little to increase density and affordability. It’s more complex than that. We need just to build better and have more mixed forms. We need smart density and better building codes… ones that don’t increase the cost of building so much that nobody can afford it. See the ideas behind the book ‘Soft City’…
link here: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/10/28/david-sim-of-soft-city
This is by a guy who works with Gehl.. one of the most celebrated human-scale architects in the world.
CE 15:40 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
Is this the kind of development you’re thinking of Ephraim. I’m sure it appeals to some people but it’s not much of a neighbourhood IMO. I’ve talked to a couple people who live there and none of them had much good to say about the experience of living in these buildings.
Tim S. 15:46 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
Has anyone spent much time in the developments near the Bell campus on Nun’s Island? Wandering around a couple of times I’ve thought it had potential as a planned neighbourhood with mixed housing types, but I don’t know what it would be like 24/7
Kate 18:27 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
Tim S., I had a very small part in working on some PR material for the area you mean. To give them credit, they were hoping to create something like a neighbourhood vibe there – they had a bakery coming in, I think, one or two restaurants, a fruiterie, maybe some other small businesses, and they planned some waterside green space that included a bike path toward other parts of the island. Some of the residential spaces were in three-storey townhouse formats but most of it was highrise.
It’s funny how much I still know about it although I’ve never set foot there, and I don’t know how well it has worked out for the people living in those buildings. I wonder whether their attitudes were changed by the pandemic, and the convenience of having a few storefront businesses nearby. Did they get more use out of having businesses in proximity, or did they just drive out somewhere else? Someone should study it.
Ephraim 22:40 on 2021-08-26 Permalink
I was thinking something between parts of Jerusalem and Toronto. They built a new commercial neighbourhood in Toronto around Yonge and Sheppard, though I don’t think it’s energy efficient enough, but they put in green spaces, trees, not giant parking lots… those are hidden. But they specifically put in trees in the back areas and left more land around the buildings, not building them into 100% of the land. Singapore is building green space into the side of buildings, but that likely won’t hold up in our weather. The area around Bar Kochva in Jerusalem, has too much parking, but they have a heck of a lot of trees and space for kids. But these are also older buildings. Newer buildings in Israel are built sort of like a square donut on the bottom floor, so that there is a place for the kids to play in the shade around the building. But always with green around the building. We don’t plan for enough trees and limiting asphalt when we design. But let’s be realistic, Nun’s Island has managed a lot of green space with tall buildings, like Vistal… except even that has too much asphalt, nevermind too much grass, when it should have trees.
I’m not saying that I have a perfect solution. But let recycling, we don’t need 10K people doing it perfectly, we need 1M people doing it 90% to make a real difference. We need to get this housing near public transit, so they can rely on it, if they want to. We need to get trees and other cooling around. We need to heat and air condition the building using geo thermal. And we need the mix of professional and residential to be better done.
And as I said before, we can look at a different ways of financing affordable housing, like subsidizing rent via a REITs or participation mortgages…. For example, you buy at half price and the city/province owns 50% of the value. If you sell in under 25 years, you get your percentage minus the mortgage and the city gets their 50%. If you get to the 25 years, the house is fully transferred to you.