Citizen driven and designed cities
Montrealers and the true will to reinvent urban living in Montreal
Western seaboard powerhouses
Cities in North America were built on economic growth created by demand for products and services in the rapid rise of the new world. Our industrial capacity and our enthusiasm for consumerism did the trick, hence a many spectacular towns have sprung from nothingness. Montreal, a classic North-American Eastern seaboard industrial town made possible by this frenetic demand and by its strategic geographic position — at a crossroad of communications channels linking Europe to America — has grown into a four million strong urban sprawl.
The west’s economic hegemony is a thing of the past and so is Montreal as we know it.
Emerging Economies
Thanks to the opening of foreign markets and free trade, emerging economies can now provide these products and services at a cheaper price quite often. They can now grow their own cities with the capital of our most successful industrialists and their own. So, what about us over-here ? With higher standards of living and stiffer labour laws, our manufacturing competitive edge has all but vanished. Left to readapt the best we can, our economy has turned its attention to new technologies in an effort to regain a competitive edge. Arguably not easily, and despite generous incentives, our manufacturing industries nevertheless keep struggling. What if we attack this problem with a totally different approach ? what if we change our cities ? what if we use what’s here already and redefine it ? what if we could redevelop unsustainable operations into sustainable ones ? what if this could create the city of the futur by spinning off new markets and new industries ? What If ?
Un-sustainability
The manufacturing of goods here is pretty much just that in most cases, unsustainable. Our advance in specific tech areas isn’t enough it seems to sustain economic growth, at least not in Montreal. To turn around our town we need more. We need a renewed urban economic model, a new urban social fabric and infrastructure strategy to create a more attractive and livable city. We need to create a new demand for product and services from existing possibilities. We need people to return to the core of the city to live, not just to get entertained. What if we tapped into the fast growing green economy by offering to rebuild Montreal along sustainable practices ? And what if we truly invested in changing the city to phase in with that very goal ?
Consultation & innovation
Thinking outside the box is often the only way of doing this in a town like ours; or simply put, being modern. We need only look around the world to find cities who have been visionary and who have totally recreated their economy with sustainable practices in production technologies, architecture and transportation. Montreal has made few progress in the past couple of years; very small steps, too small. Competing cities are making great strides, in Canada, the US and Europe.
The Ten Most Sustainable Cities in the World — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibf0-SZ9RjY
The need to reinvent Montreal has never been so obvious since the great infrastructures construction era of the 1960s. So much so that there are more consulting firms in urban design now than there ever was in Montreal.
More importantly
More importantly, there are more citizen groups than ever willing to pitch into actual projects, even create projects from scratch whether it is for creating a green environment in their back alley or recreating a whole neighbourhood with an abandoned site. The will to reposition Montreal has to come from the top however; no matter how much the youth and the lovers of this city are ready to pitch in and how good their ideas and projects are, if the people who hold the power do not have the will to go about the major shift this town needs, we will keep losing ground to competition. It is a true wealth to have citizens wanting to work at recreating Montreal, without being paid money !! that’s dedication to your community. City Hall must respect this, what’s more, they need to recognize it and allow it. Public money is one thing. The help of urbanistes at city hall and the cutting of red tape is something that can be done right now; leaders must recognize the will and knowledge its citizens.
THEME OF THE 2016 ÉDITION : RECONVERT MONTREAL
Good PR, not much in gestures
This city’s ways have to be adapted to accept this new creative force; a force that lies in its own backyard; a force from citizens of all trades. The Je Vois Montreal, Je Fais Montreal and now Morph.O.Polis of this world provide a stimulation of the creative force of citizens and young professionals. A necessary gesture that looks great, and that’s all there is to that. With not much true power levers to make the most promising projects advance, these events remain empty shells serving to create illusion and lose more time.
Think Tanks & Roundtables
Think Tanks & Roundtables are good. For example, the Noteman House, one of this city’s few direct gestures accomplished in the near past for reshaping the future (note that it was enabled by the Gerald Tremblay Administration). PR events will make all of us think we’re taking charge over the perilous socio-economic situation we are in. But, in most cases they won’t take creations and projects worth being looked at to the next steps of realization, much less to fruition even despite the quality and vision of many of them. And those who do advance to realization take for ever. Even public budgeted projects for the city’s 375th anniversary are late. All of them. This heavily clustered and biased administration, and perhaps even its unwillingness, is a show stopper and a huge obstacle to evolution. Are we going to miss our own anniversary? This administration needs to change its ways and release this city’s creative power for real.
Political Culture
Often, city hall wants to protect its own network of businesses or people that could be bothered by a given project; a project that is better, a project that could benefit smaller businesses and benefit to more citizens. It seems some abandoned urban lots are reserved for friends of the power structure… Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t an affirmation, it is an impression. If my impression is wrong, then the municipal political apparatus suffers from severe sclerosis and misjudgement. Its inefficiency is sinking our town. The demonstration of this is this city’s ten year gap in sustainable development and green technology development compared to Toronto and Vancouver, let alone even more advanced US and European Cities.
Better Block
In 1970, a group of citizens in Dallas Texas wanted to recreate a street corner, they were nearly jailed by authorities for defying city hall’s rules. In the end, a federal court protected their rights to submit projects and be helped by municipal authorities to realize the projects when citizens approved of them. Today, Better Block is the world’s largest non-profit citizen organisation for urban re-development. That’s right, they are worldwide now and have helped citizens recreate street corners and whole neighbourhoods through collaboration and sustainable development in several countries. Moreover, they have done cities a lot of good.
The Better Block http://www.livablecities.org/blog/city-city-block-block-building-better-blocks-project
A many similar movements here find little echo
Montreal city hall needs to arrive at modernity when so many Montreal loving citizens are ready to have this community profit from their knowledge and efforts in making their little corner of the city better to everyone. The culture of community power by citizens in the US is quite a bit developed and quite successful. This has been demonstrated repeatedly, hence the US government and many us state jurisdictions now have repeated yearly budgets going to these non-profit organisations because of their positive economic impact. Like them, we need to dig into this collective wealth that costs all of us very little and that taps into its strength for everyone’s positive gain.
THE AGE OF URBAN TECH — New Cities Summit
Acting
The Noteman House & Darling foundries of our fair town and other think tanks are a good way to create the new bases for a moderne economy. However, the will for a significant private and public funding culture has to be transpired through action to insure that promising projects grow to fruition. The true vision for the futur needs substance, not just talk and superficial instruments of public relations. Taking Montreal out of its economic stagnation once and for all needs an integrated and cohesive gesture from the whole of this society, not just a display of goodwill citizens and their cute tech startups funded by scraps to remain as a instrument of hope.
Creating wealth by recreating communities
Public Money
Public money almost never comes without private money. Indeed the state will only invest as a partner in almost all cases, understandably. Creating a public-private partnership can be quite the challenge, especially on public owned land. I don’t know about other jurisdictions, other provinces and states, but here, public owned land seems to be a problem. They are often sold at ridiculous prices, or even given away, to private owners for private development and not much control over what is done with it or over what is built on it. This is problematic for the city and its future because unsustainable infrastructures create little growth and can even create costly problems. The public land in Montreal owned by us and managed by the Société Québécoise des Infrastructures should be used to put forth visionary projects that will create jobs all the while bettering the urban environment it sits in. In other words, if we are going to spend public money or give away valuable land in Montreal to private owners, what will become of it must profite to the community in the future. Sustainable projects create a positive outcome in the future.
Private Owners & the future of the community
This problem seems especially severe in Montreal. When a private company gets a piece of our city to build a high-rise condominium tower with no particular sustainable design generating profits for himself, the owners of the complexe and for the buyers of the units, who are more often than not foreigners, what does it sustain for Montreal? Unless entrepreneurs and owners are local, our community gets nothing, no enhanced quality of life, no good new jobs and almost no accessible business opportunities. We get foreign owners renting their spaces for profit to tourists coming to town for our international festivals. The middle class is this community’s mass and its power for the future; if Montreal keeps offering them too little to live and dream for, they will keep choosing the suburbs. This is true for young businesses as much as for young professionals.
Marché Voyageur
A groupe of citizens from around downtown have come together in early 2015 to counter a Quebec project planning to erect a Revenu Quebec office tower on the abandoned Voyageur Coach terminal site at the corner of Berri & De Maisonneuve — a public owned infrastructure. I initiated the Marché Voyageur alternative project in late 2014 at the Je Vois Montréal forum because I thought the 246,000,000$ Quebec project was too much public money for something that did nothing to answer critical needs in the area. Being a Quartier Latin resident I am confronted to its socio-economic problems daily. Moreover, it is one of the city’s worst food desert. Knowing what this lot represents in terms of urban design, being the entrance of the city connected to the Berri metro, and knowing all that needs correcting in this residential area, I thought the Quebec pitch made no sense and had no vision.
The best opportunity in decades
The îlot Voyageur South lot is this city’s best opportunity for the next big economic impact project. Montreal needs to have vision in this dossier. Another error on the îlot Voyageur can cost all of us dearly for decades to come. It is the center of the city, nothing less than its central square, main public transit intersection and its civic entrance to the world. It needs more than a civil servant office tower that shuts down at 5pm every day and on weekends. It needs more than what already exists on the same street corner as in the Place Dupuis. At one quarter of a billion dollar of public money, we need a project that will create business, jobs, civic and social services; a project that will be in phase with the Quartier Latin’s immediate needs and Montreal’s sustainable future. If we want an intelligent city, an inclusive and green city, a community and a society turned towards the future and towards the industries that will create it, we must start for real and we must use the core of this city as a starting point and as a powerful message.
More to read about the subject :
Cities are hubs for ideas, commerce, culture, science, productivity, social development and much more. At their best…www.un.org
