Montrealers lack a genuine urban sensibility

Prizing the suburbs over Montreal feeds into apathy about the city

This column focuses on the issues of urban renewal and resilience. It is part of our biweekly Montreal Reimagined series.

I was once a panellist at a discussion about Montreal condo development at the Maison de l’architecture du Québec. During the question- and- answer period, I remarked we ought to treat the city as our living room, accepting smaller housing in the city’s core in return for a more vibrant urban life and a lower environmental impact.

I agree with Harvard economist Edward Glaeser who wrote in his book Triumph of the City: “We must stop idolizing home ownership, which favours suburban tract homes over highrise apartments, and stop romanticizing rural villages.” A gentleman in the audience who identified himself as an architect angrily replied he didn’t want to live in an apartment, nor did he want to use the city as his living room. He provided no reasoning for his outburst other than dismay at the size and price of condos in Montreal, but his opinion was symptomatic of an intangible, yet pernicious problem with how we think about our city. Montrealers lack a genuinely urban sensibility and judge Montreal against a suburban ideal. Our politics, our environment and our city are the worse for it.

This bias against the city runs deep. Université Laval sociologist Andrée Fortin’s research found Quebec films depict urban settings as unlivable places scarred by poverty and crime. Suburbs, by contrast, have been idealized on film, especially for families raising children, as dreamed of places with a bright future where life is good, as François Cardinal recently discussed in La Presse.

And when we’re not dreaming of the suburbs, we rhapsodize about foreign cities. Leonard Cohen may have described Old Montreal ( though, importantly, not by name) in Suzanne, but he is likely better known for romanticizing an already heavily romanticized other metropolis in Chelsea Hotel # 2: “Those were the reasons and that was New York,” he recounted to the world. Places like New York generate stories about themselves through film, song, television and literature that make city living appealing to vast hordes of aspiring Manhattanites. The same cannot be said for Montreal.

Art imitates life, but it also shapes our mentalities.

Setting aside the practical and political obstacles to making our city a more attractive place to put down roots ( higher property valuations, underinvestment in public transit and urban infrastructure from all levels of government), a pervasive anti- urban attitude threatens Montreal’s sustainable growth. Why? Because prizing the suburbs over the city feeds into apathy about Montreal and reduces our communal sense of ownership and the amount of pressure placed on the municipal, provincial and federal governments to make the city a better place to live. If young families and seniors and single young professionals were all clamouring to live in downtown Montreal, the city would be forced to respond to demands for better services and amenities. A prejudice against city living makes it easier for city hall to get away with doing less for everyone.

Talking about abstract things like collective attitudes may seem academic, but the way we think has serious consequences in the real world. As the threat of climate change grows, the need to combat urban sprawl and its harmful side effects has become impera- tive. To do so, we need to change our ideal of where and how a good life is lived. Sacrificing square footage does not mean sacrificing enjoyment — quite the opposite. A shorter commute means more time to yourself, less money spent on gas and car maintenance, and fewer greenhouse gases. Living in a city apartment means being able to walk, bike or take a bus to the store, to the park, to your child’s school or to a friend’s house.

City life has the added perk of making us more generous and trusting: Glaeser notes the kind of face- to- face contact city- dwellers run into on a daily basis, whether on public transit, in the halls of apartment buildings, or in line at the grocery store, leads to more trust, generosity and co- operation than any other sort of interaction.

Making Montreal more dense, especially around transit hubs like métro and train stations ( a practice known as transit- oriented development), is already a priority mandated by the Plan métropolitain d’aménagement et de développement, the document that lays out the broad urban planning goals of the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal. Glaeser highlights the importance of this: “Good environmentalism means putting buildings in places where they will do the least ecological harm. This means we must be more tolerant of tearing down the short build- ings in cities in order to build tall ones, and more intolerant of the activists who oppose emissions-reducing urban growth. Governments should encourage people to live in modestly sized urban aeries instead of bribing home buyers into big suburban McMansions.” It remains to be seen how the city will implement transit- oriented development here. One area ripe for such redevelopment is Pierre-de-Coubertin Ave. between the Viau and Pie- IX métro stations across from the Olympic Stadium. In proximity to sporting facilities, a cinema, the Botanical Garden, the Biodome, and Maisonneuve Park — and a scant 15- minute métro ride to downtown Montreal — the avenue should be home to thousands of Montrealers living in high- rises profiting from a spectacular view and exceptional mobility, yet it is lined with small apartment houses and duplexes entirely out of scale with the towering stadium, wasting the true value of the land.

A greener, more livable Montreal is possible, but we have to really want it. We will never get what we do not demand from our governments, real estate developers and urban planners. It is time to start dreaming big about living in Montreal.