In defense of the new downtown construction
An opinion piece in Le Devoir defends the many new construction sites we’ve seen downtown since 2008, roughly. Bruno Collin makes the point that the city core was full of empty lots in the 1980s, and that the new construction fulfills an urban densification plan initially conceived during the Doré administration in 1990.
What Collin fails to do is explain why he thinks the design of the latest crop of condo buildings is better than, or sets itself apart from, buildings put up in the 1960s and 1970s by “des investisseurs étrangers insensibles à la qualité architecturale d’une ville qu’ils ne connaissaient même pas.” Most of the new buildings are the typical highrise condo buildings found in any city from Guangzhou to Dubai. There’s nothing especially distinctive about any of them.
MarcG 17:23 on 2022-03-07 Permalink
I watched a documentary called Cities Held Hostage last night, it’s an interesting and depressing look at Montreal’s development over the years. https://gem.cbc.ca/media/absolutely-canadian/s17e03
DeWolf 18:34 on 2022-03-07 Permalink
Even an ugly apartment building is better than a parking lot.
According to the 2021 census, Montreal has the second fastest growing downtown population in Canada. That’s a good thing. There are huge tracts of land that were just empty 15 years ago that are now filled with people and businesses. Some of the new construction is ugly, some of it is nice, but if we’re too precious about these things we’ll end up with a moribund city. We certainly don’t want to end up like San Francisco, where it’s almost impossible to get anything built, despite some of the most expensive housing in the world.
DeWolf 18:41 on 2022-03-07 Permalink
Forgot to add a link to the StatCan report about downtown growth:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220209/dq220209b-eng.htm
“The most populated downtowns were Toronto (275,931 people), Vancouver (121,932 people), Montréal (109,509 people), Ottawa (67,169 people) and Edmonton (55,387 people).
(…)
The downtown of Halifax grew at the fastest pace (+26.1%) from 2016 to 2021. In several of Canada’s largest urban centres, the downtowns also showed very robust population growth, namely in Montréal (+24.2%), Calgary (+21.0%) and Toronto (+16.1%).”
Kate 20:30 on 2022-03-08 Permalink
Thanks for the numbers, DeWolf.
Robert H 12:11 on 2022-03-09 Permalink
Je me plains aussi de la qualité de ce qui est construit, dont le pire est le Dorchester sur le boulevard René Levesque. Le piéton ou l’automobiliste qui s’approche en direction de l’ouest verra un mur aveugle de 37 étages. Mais je crois aussi que chaque chantier est un vote de confiance dans le centre-ville. D’autres villes luttent pour atteindre le niveau d’activité économique dont jouit Montréal. Mais il est certain que, comme le centre-ville devient de plus en plus résidentiel, les promoteurs doivent à la ville plus d’attention et de soin dans le raffinement et la conception des nouveaux bâtiments.