Nathalie Collard talks to Mayor Plante about Montreal as a feminist city as she prepares to inaugurate Place des Montréalaises this Friday. (The city page says Saturday although Collard’s text says Friday.)
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Kate
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Kate
Marie-Andrée Mauger, the mayor of Verdun, has announced she won’t be running again this November. That’s three women mayors that won’t be back.
nau
That’s too bad. I met her once at a meeting with my neighbours where they had gathered to complain about, wait for it, street parking. Some of them were aggrieved because they once in the winter they had to park on the next street over! These are all people with driveways but for some not ones big enough for the multiple vehicles they own, and who gave one the impression that they felt the street space in front of their place should be reserved for them to park their private vehicles for free. Anyway, she handled this with good grace and came across very much like a regular decent person who wanted to do the right thing. In other words, exactly the sort of person you would want in a local politician and so also the sort of person who gets worn down by the relentless attacks of the self-centered haters.
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Kate
Quebec has posted 44 roadwork sites around Montreal this summer, including 19 that are new. Driving this summer will not be like a car commercial, the city warns.
CBC has a brief video focusing on the three main areas where they foresee trouble. Unfortunately, one is simply “downtown.”
Ian
On the radio this morning the guy from the city said 1000 worksites total. That includes minor sites too, of course.
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Kate
The union that represents the STM’s administrative, technical and professional workers has adopted a strike mandate because negotiations over a new contract have taken more than a year and are not yet resolved. This union has not held or threatened a strike for more than 40 years.
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Kate
A committee was created in 2023 to hustle along plans to build housing on the old Blue Bonnets land. Now the city has created a second committee to encourage the first. Nice aerial photo shows the extent of the old racecourse.
jeather
Committees all the way down.
Ephraim
This is exactly why things never get done. The city already knows the size of the land in square metres. We also know that for a neighbourhood served by a metro, the typical density is about 100 dwellings per hectare, or 5,000 to 10,000 dwellings per square kilometre. In Paris, for example, the density is at least 20,000 people per square kilometre, with the optimal range being 20,000 to 30,000 people per square kilometre. So, we know the minimum required per hectare. Assuming an average of two people per dwelling, the city should be able to determine what percentage of housing needs to be affordable. By looking at surrounding neighbourhoods, it should also be able to estimate how many two-bedroom, three-bedroom, and four-bedroom units are needed, as well as what proportion of the area should be allocated to retail versus residential use.
The city could even design this part of the city with zero street parking. All parking could be assigned to residences, because if any street parking is left available, it will just become free parking for people using the metro. All parking should be paid spots, and the city can likely calculate the required parking density as well. Small areas—one or two spaces per hectare—could be set aside for visitors, deliveries, and similar needs. They also need to plan for mail delivery.
If I can figure out most of this without a committee, why is it so difficult for the city to do the same?
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Kate
A man who stabbed an acquaintance to death with a barbecue fork at a drug‑fuelled social gathering in 2022 was sentenced to five and a half years last week. The victim had poured hot sauce on the other man’s genitals and, in revenge, got stabbed to death. Only on the South Shore.
azrhey
Hey come on! That totally could have been Laval too! 🙂
Bert
Nah, we are civilized…. We use tongs.
Kate
Bert, I’ve been laughing (evilly) every time I reread that.
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Kate
Place Versailles, the city’s oldest indoor mall, will be transformed into a densified neighbourhood with 6,000 housing units. The plan will take 25 years and, of course, not everyone likes it.
dhomas
I live in proximity of Place Versailles. In the summer, I bike to the mall to get groceries at Maxi, and supplies at Dollarama, Canadian Tire, and other shops.
My hopes for this project:
1) Keep ground-level commercial, preferably as an indoor walkable mall (5000-6000 units will need to shop!)
2) Put a direct connection to Radisson metro (not sure why this wasn’t done when the metro was built, since the mall pre-existed the metro). Today, you have to exit the metro and cross the street to get to the mall. It creates a bit of a mess with the car traffic, buses, pedestrians, etc.
3) Keep some services and add some. Place Versailles is home to a Montreal municipal courthouse, the SAAQ, Hema-Québec. Might want a school in proximity, maybe? A library?
4) Make it accessible. i.e. not a completely gentrified complex.Kate
Items say that space is being set aside for a school, but whether one gets built in a timely way will depend on the Quebec government’s whims. Some social housing is also intended, but how that will pan out with the developer’s ideas remains to be seen.
I don’t think I’ve ever been to Place Versailles. Am I missing anything?
dhomas
You’re not missing much. I mean, it has nice skylights, I suppose. A pretty fountain. It’s nice to walk through. The Safari pet store is actually really nice with a fish pond, and some exotic bird cages, plus lots of other animals (there was a similar one in Rockland, that was really a shame when it closed). It’s old, but some bits have been renovated. But really, it’s a proximity mall that is more pleasant than the strip malls that are its alternatives in the area. I actually prefer it to the Galeries d’Anjou, which is not far. Galeries d’Anjou feel like it’s trying to be Carrefour Laval (which itself is super American-style), but it can’t quite pull it off. PV is more casual.
dhomas
Oh, one more thing to add to the wishlist!
Put all the parking underneath the building! Right now, I think there is as much surface area used for parking as there is for buildings. Though I did use the farther reaches of the parking lot to teach my kids how to ride their bikes. 😀Kate
I haven’t been in a pet store with animals for sale in a long time. Around here, it’s pet supplies only.
jeather
Sometimes they work with a rescue to have pets available.
EmilyG
I’ve been to Place Versailles a couple times. I liked it.
I’d say it’s worth going to, to check it out. It’s convenient that it’s near a metro station.Kate
jeather, I remember TooZoo on the Main near Duluth used to have rescue kittens sometimes because I occasionally went in to look at them. According to Google TooZoo’s still open, which is good. They were nice people.
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