A brief piece in La Presse says that the Plateau’s replacement of parking spaces with concrete‑framed mini sponge parks is causing a fuss on social media.
Updates from October, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
24Hres asks a question which has undoubtedly crossed many of our minds: why do people who don’t live in Montreal rail against it so much? “Montréal est invivable, sale, dangereuse, hostile aux voitures et — surtout — envahie par les vélos et les pistes cyclables….”
Josh
There might be additional factors with Montreal/Quebec but isn’t this the dynamic in almost every media capital around the world? I think Americans who live outside of New York think this about New York, ROCers definitely have these kinds of feelings for Toronto… I’d be the same or a similar hostility exists with respect to Paris, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, etc. I think a lot of it is down to the fact that… to take Toronto as an example, so much of Canadian media is concentrated there that it often feels like the attention given to news that occurs there is completely disproportionate to its importance.
DeWolf
Josh is exactly right. There is always resentment in the periphery towards the metropolis.
Just for example, here’s a recent article about how Long Island politicians are winning elections by attacking New York City:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/04/nyregion/mamdani-suburbs-voters-republicans.html
There’s a nuance here, which is that suburbanites often dislike the city because they or their parents moved away for some specific reason (crime, cleanliness, diversity, etc.). People in the countryside or in smaller cities dislike it for more ambiguous reasons: maybe they think it’s too dominant economically or culturally, or they just don’t like the things it represents.
Ian
The folk love to hate the big smoke.
Kevin
I’ve lived in a few places, but Montreal is the only place where people in the burbs and rural areas are afraid of the big city. It’s like being in a 1980s Chris Columbus or John Hughes movie.
Ian
Rural Ontario also fears the city.
Uatu
A lot of it is click bait social media. Have you been downtown lately? It’s pretty boring. And suburban bike paths aren’t all that better. Mamils tour de France -ing, speeding kids on e-scooters, the “attention, attention!” crowd who don’t know that they have brakes or can actually ride on the grass around you if they have to….
Blork
Yes, I think social media plays a large role. A generation ago, suburbanites probably disliked the city the same as now, but you didn’t generally hear about it. But now, with social media giving everyone (including all idiots) a license to go on and on about stuff they know nothing about, and with that crap grabbing more attention than the former “normal” media, it seems like there’s more fear or resentment than before. I suspect it’s about the same amount as there’s always been except now we hear about it (and hear about it and hear about it…).
Ian
I assume most of it it is thinly veiled racism, really.
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Kate
A woman pedestrian was killed by a minibus in the airport Park’n’Fly lot, Friday afternoon. TVA says she was 76, CTV that she was in her fifties. (Since corrected. CTV now also says she was 76.)
That makes eight pedestrians killed so far in the city, this year – that I’ve been able to take note of.
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Kate
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Kate
CBC has a feature comparing the platforms of the major candidates in the impending election, even giving Kacou and Thibodeau some space.
CTV has a piece on why we should vote but with a headline “Should Montrealers care…” which hints at a negative response.
On CultMTL, Toula Drimonis lays out why we should care about the election.
La Presse thinks Projet will be having Valérie Plante along to boost its final weeks of campaigning.
CBC looks at how noise complaints have become a campaign issue.
Ian 20:17 on 2025-10-17 Permalink
Srsly tho if the “park” doesn’t go down to actual dirt is it actually effective? This feels very cosmetic…
Blork 21:28 on 2025-10-17 Permalink
Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing. Sponge parks are a good idea, but is there any evidence that these small things are effective at all?
MarcG 08:27 on 2025-10-18 Permalink
You can see that the top layer of asphalt is at least broken, and I think that they’re larger than they seem, especially if you consider them collectively. That price tag of $32,000 kills me, though. We absolutely need an in-house team to do shit like this and stop getting gouged by private business.
Ian 09:48 on 2025-10-18 Permalink
To be fair it is 10% of the cost of a planted bulbout. Funny to think an intersection is the same price as buying a duplex but priorities are priorities lol
Mozai 10:33 on 2025-10-18 Permalink
These are sponge parks? But, there’s grates that open into water drains on the same street. And sponge parks are supposed to be giant water containers these have less volume than a single automobile. I just thought they were nice, and prevented people from parking in the intersection where they get sideswiped by other cars making turns.
DeWolf 11:44 on 2025-10-18 Permalink
There’s research that suggests a single urban tree generates 3x the value of its cost in terms of cleaning the air, lowering temperatures, encouraging biodiversity, etc.
On top of that, a single street parking space in Montreal costs the city $1,250 per year in terms of road maintenance and snow clearance. So in theory, this tree will pay for itself in about 25 years, maybe a little longer if you include the cost of occasional pruning, watering and so on.
You can take issue with the cost but it’s not exactly money down the drain. To be honest, I’m kind of surprised that in 2025 planting trees on mostly treeless street is controversial. I guess that giant climate march before the pandemic really was a long time ago…
Ian 18:04 on 2025-10-18 Permalink
Building a 32k planter isn’t necessary to plant a tree, let’s not conflate the two things. If that planter lasts even 10 years let alone 25 I will be very, very surprised.
CE 21:25 on 2025-10-18 Permalink
All of the planters of this type that I’ve seen have been on very narrow streets where it would be impossible to put a tree on the sidewalks. The first ones I saw were on Coloniale south of Rachel, a street with very few trees compared to the rest of the neighbourhood.
Ian 21:48 on 2025-10-18 Permalink
Be that as it may, does it require a 32k planter?
While we’re on the topic, I’d love to see the breakdown of the cost of a space used for parking – I’ve seen it variously quoted as 1200, 1250, and 1275 but never any explanation. If the sidewalk was a metre wider, would this cost somehow vanish? Is this some back-of-envelope calculation based on road maintenance across the city broken down to square footage?
I have lived on many older streets that are just stoop and narrow sidewalk, no yards or trees or dividers. Trees would have been great, but 32k planters? Sounds like somebody who is friends with a councillor owns a planter installation business.
CE 22:43 on 2025-10-18 Permalink
My problem with these planters is their shape and the way they’re separated from the sidewalk. Since they (nearly) meet the sidewalk at a 90 degree angle, it’s going to be impossible for the street cleaners to clean either side of them as they pass. There’s also a narrow gap between the planter and the sidewalk which, if anyone has seen the space between Bixi stands and the sidewalk, will quickly fill with dirt and garbage. Some of them rise a bit above the asphalt on one side and are level with it on the other. They just look kind of slapped together and haphazard unlike the intersection bulb-outs which are much more attractive and deliberate looking. Something like this would have looked much better and addresses all these issues.
DeWolf 11:35 on 2025-10-19 Permalink
It’s $1275. My mistake. The number comes from a study done by CRE-Montreal:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/cheap-parking-owning-cars-1.6769888
Describing this as a planter implies it’s a self-contained concrete vessel inserted into the ground. It’s not. It’s literally a hole in the ground with a small concrete barrier to protect it from snow clearance. Officially, it’s temporary, and meant to be incorporated into a permanent curb extension. There’s a full explanation here that is much better than what La Presse provided:
https://montreal.ca/articles/fosses-sur-chaussees-voici-tout-ce-que-vous-devez-savoir-99470
Why does it cost $32,000? Good question. But given how costs have exploded it’s not surprising. It costs $350,000 to install a single traffic light in Montreal:
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/grand-montreal/2025-05-12/financement-des-infrastructures/un-million-pour-remplacer-un-feu-de-signalisation.php
I’m not really sure I understand your point about having lived on a treeless street. Congratulations? I’m pretty sure most of us have lived on a narrow, treeless street at some point in our lives. It doesn’t change the point that trees are not a nice to have, they’re essential, and increasingly so given the changing climate.
Ian 15:04 on 2025-10-19 Permalink
I love that you think this is about people not wanting trees, lol.
Ian 15:11 on 2025-10-19 Permalink
Also FWIW I’ve seen lots of articles quoting that study including the one you linked, but can’t find the actual breakdown even on the CRE website. I have my suspicions, like the comically spurious 100k fior a downtown parking space people used to faithfully recite, which turned out to be based on the average square footgae price of commercial real estate towers. Calculated across all floors.
This parking spot would be worth a million dollars if it was in a gold mine haha
CE 16:12 on 2025-10-19 Permalink
That’s good to know that they’re temporary, hopefully they come up with better designs like the one I linked above when they redo the streets. Many of the ones I’ve seen are on streets that are due up for a renovation (like Coloniale).
DeWolf 19:35 on 2025-10-19 Permalink
So what is this about, Ian? Fiscal responsibility for the rate-payers’ association?
Ian 05:10 on 2025-10-20 Permalink
Why you are defending 32k “temporary” planters is a question worth asking, too. Who are you defending, Chris?
Fiscal responsibility for our collective spend when the city claims impoverishment repeatedly is not an unresaonable desire, nor is justification for 32k road-troughs in the guise of greening initiatives that are clearly greening the inside of somebody’s pocket more than these narrow streets that deserve better planning. Or are you OK with PM’s reputation as performative urbanists with no real vision let alone money sense? I know you don’t see how this kind fo project ties in to gentrification and corruption, but If you were trying to false flag for Ensemble you couldn’t be doing a better job.
patatrio 22:26 on 2025-10-20 Permalink
@DeWolf
Doesn’t seem to have been mentioned that it is a pilot project and therefore the installation is designed to to not only trial a new approach for which there is no process, but also test and learn to improve the planning and execution, then measure against other methods. I must admit, I have never seen this type of thing being done before elsewhere but if there has been a similar case, I am sure it is what inspired this pilot in the first place.
32k might seem high but I’d wager there are a number of ways that monetary value is recouped in knowledge and knowhow.
Some of the costs will be recouped when eventually the bump out is complete this reducing the end cost of the project, while also allowing young trees to establish much earlier. The works are indeed the kind of thing VdM can handle, but for the sake of the prototype they would have hired a contractor who needs to arrange for access, rentals, and coordinate a program that has a degree of unknowability.
There are probably more factors under study wrt methodology, materials, design, execution and impact, but all in all I doubt the real thing will end up costing anywhere near 32k in real money and in any case it is a low risk bet by PM.