Montreal: what a city can be
A web magazine I’ve never noticed before has a glowing report on Montreal as “what a city can be” – which spends paragraphs idealizing the peace and order that reign here.
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Kate
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Uatu 10:36 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
I guess he likes our caca filled streets ;P
walkerp 10:48 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
Well that was pleasant to read. I could nitpick but the author broadly gets most of it right. It’s really directed at Americans and it sends a message that is good for them to absorb (and for us to retain).
Robert 11:13 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
I thought you had linked to another of those sloppily written travel pieces composed of clichés about “Paris en Amérique du Nord” or quaint and colorful Quebec, best places for poutine and smoked meat, ending with a stop at Mount Royal belvedere. But Del Mastro has written a short yet thoughtful consideration of what makes Montreal so special. Montreal is not overflowing with dazzling tourist attractions, but what makes it so attractive to visitors, especially from the US is its anomalous “fine grained” urban quality. That makes this city something of a novelty on this continent where the primary model of metropolitan development consists of single family homes on meandering streets with an “office park” campus here and a shopping mall there, all of it threaded by freeways and six lane wide arterials lined with strip malls and lots of free parking. It’s a different experience for people coming from that environment to walk the bustling streets of a thriving city district. Locals, inured to that distinction, wonder what the fuss is all about. Montreal isn’t Brigadoon. Indeed, if we could send tourists to Laval, South Shore and West Island, they might wonder why they even bothered to get on a plane. And if you think Del Mastro’s glasses are too rose colored, you can always recommend translated articles from the Journal de Montréal as correctives.
Robert 11:23 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
@Uatu: C’pas San Francisco icitte!
PatrickC 11:33 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
It’s a reminder of the importance of older zoning policies (or perhaps the lack of them) that allowed for mixed development and a great variety of buildings on commercial streets. I’m afraid that when whole areas are redeveloped en bloc (Griffintown?), the advantages of that heterogeneity are forgotten.
Meezly 12:04 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
Even visiting Vancouverites have remarked on how refreshing it is to see the mixed development in our neighbourhoods (primarily the Plateau area) compared to the more demarcated zoning laws (business vs residential) in Vancouver. Griffintown does remind me of Yaletown and similar areas in downtown Van.
Kate 12:16 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
i remember being in a U.S. town with friends and asking where the town actually was. But, as the saying goes, there was no there, there. It was all suburban highways and strip malls – there was no walkable older downtown area at all. And I suspect that’s default for much of North America.
I mean, even Pointe Claire has Pointe Claire village.
dhomas 12:34 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
I once booked a hotel in the Seattle area (Bellevue) that was about 200m, as the crow flies, from my office. I thought “this is great, I don’t need to rent a car, I can just walk to the office!”. Except those 200m included an 8-lane “road”, which was actually a highway in everything but name. What should have been a couple of minutes walk turned into nearly a half hour. Every time I would travel in North America, I would come back to Montreal with a new appreciation of our city.
Kevin 16:21 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
Kate
There is a line similar to that in “From Scratch” where an Italian guy’s parents ask if his home in LA is near the city centre, and he tells them for the umpteenth time that in the US there is no such thing.
walkerp 17:59 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
We are very fortunate. The battle is ongoing, but Montreal’s mixed use neighbourhood model (plus lots of historical luck) is one that many see as the future of cities in a post climate-change world. This is why shitbirds like Martineau (who I assume actually lives here) need to be consigned to the dustbin of history.
DeWolf 18:13 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
Montreal wouldn’t have been so remarkable 75 years ago. But US cities have been hollowed out to such an extent that there’s only a handful of cities that offer a similarly large, continuous expanse of lively, fine-grained urban fabric: New York (of course), San Francisco, Boston/Cambridge and the north side of Chicago. (And maybe Philadelphia, but I haven’t been there to find out.) Otherwise, there are lots of great urban neighbourhoods in various US cities, but they’re usually cut off from each other by big expressways, car-oriented dead zones or areas with serious crime problems.
Kevin 23:15 on 2023-06-28 Permalink
DeWolf
I only spent a few days in Philly, but friends who lived there would agree with your assessment. It is extremely walkable with a lot of neighbourhoods.
mb 07:35 on 2023-06-29 Permalink
All you need to agree with Del Mastro is to leave MTL for a couple of months/years. One gets used to everything, except the winter.
Shawn Goldwater 07:53 on 2023-06-29 Permalink
It’s been years since I have been there but I would think that San Francisco no longer works as an example, because those fine urban areas are so hemmed in by high crime areas. One can’t even approach Mission at night. And so what’s left as a vibrant safe city centre is so expensive, so overrun by tourists and investors.
walkerp 09:11 on 2023-06-29 Permalink
Except that is utter bullshit Shawn Goldwater. San Francisco still very much as walkable as it ever was.
walkerp 10:26 on 2023-06-29 Permalink
Or should I refer to you as Shawn “Barry” Goldwater? :). [that’s a joke for us old heads]
Blork 15:49 on 2023-06-29 Permalink
The article does offer some interesting perspectives, but there are plenty of leaps-of-faith and generalizations. It’s nice that he felt safe when walking around in Montreal, and in general I think he’s right that Montreal is safer than most large US cities. But most (or at least many) US cities do have safe(ish) neighborhoods even if they are interspersed with less safe ones.
Same with walkability and whatnot. Most (not all) US cities I’ve been to have plenty of very walkable neighborhoods, often full of interesting independent shops and restaurants. Chicago, Seattle, L.A., New York (obv.), San Francisco (obv.), Philly, Cincinatti, etc. I’ve had nice neighbourhood walks in all of them.
But class plays into it a lot. Those tree-lined streets and indy shops don’t come cheap, so the poorer neighborhoods tend to be ruled by parking lots and chain stores.