Habitat 67, Montreal's 'failed dream'
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The article is one opinion and it is shallow in content.
Looks very livable unlike many condos built in 1967.
Definitly a place I wish I would live in :)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krVpLIN7Oxs
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36bq5W7tbxE (WARNING - obnoxious music, turn down the volume)
I just thought it'd be a good idea to give a warning as having some unexpected music blast in your ears when you're just there to see a guy surfing a winter wave looks like might annoy some.
There's an even better wave upstream near the Lachine neighborhood.
There is another one upstream from vague a guy (mavericks or something like that?), but it's a bit too sketchy for my liking.
I was one of the OG habitat kakayers, there was no surfers back then, none. I saw maybe 1-2 kayakers a month, usually the guys from the old riot factory, no one knew about it. I found it only because my friend happened to live at habitat.
To be honest once people found out about it and the surf school started it was ruined, I never go anymore, Big Joe is still empty though most of the time, you have to be nuts to bring a suft board way out there, I think in 5 years I saw maybe 3 surfers out there and 2 arrived by jet ski.
First time out I followed a Riot paddler who was keen to take me out as the rest of my crew didn't want to go. There was a massive thunderstorm and I noticed that everyone else had gone so I paddled back alone, riding the lightening.
Great times.
Yea it's not a practice that scales really well sadly. I usually go from like 7am - 11am so it's really chill and empty.
(Seems weird to be talking about this stuff on HN, but fun.)
But very few "kooks" are interested in surfing them, survival instinct works pretty well.
Something like the Barbican in London tries to provide it's own views by having a courtyard. That only works on one side of the building, and your other views depends on what London have decided to built. Habitat 67 have some of this, by having multiple terraces and an interesting shape, but mostly gets its views from being on an peninsula.
It's a pretty sad thing to think that building 'odd-looking avant-guarde, expensive and dysfunctional architecture has anything to do with building a functional future and helping to improve social conditions.
Can we look at that project and assume for a moment that anyone was actually trying to 'alleviate poverty'?
The 67 project is actually an interesting sight to see, and a worthy attempt at 'something' - just not in the context with which it was initiated.
It's more likely it was a giant expression of creative hubris, which is fine, but not with the price tag or hypocritical lamentations.
Can anyone see how all of these dramatic projects, borne of the minds of 1960's progressive thinkers, mapped into every artifact of social life may have had unsurprisingly bad consequences?
This project is straight out of Trudeau Sr. era - and there are many more - please have a look here [1] the famed Olympic Stadium, which was never finished and is effectively dysfunctional.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Stadium_(Montreal)
These projects should be giant lessons in self awareness more than anything. When we look at them in retrospect and ponder 'what were think thinking they were trying to do?', the reaction should be 'I wonder what we think we are trying to achieve now?'.
The few examples of modern "sustainable," neighbourhoods that emerged organically were the result of a community (often illegally) adapting industrial buildings for mixed use, and then a cycle of gentrification that makes them desirable. Letting owners convert residential to mixed use also does it. The central planning route just creates subsidized luxury housing for the politically connected.
Architecture expresses economics, and Habitat 67 was an artifact of using federal largess to bribe Quebec to stay in confederation in an age of naive social engineering. When I last saw it in the 90's, the way it continued to absorb subsidies to maintain it on behalf of people who worked in publicly funded culture industries, was basically the most Canadian thing ever.
I often say that Canada is british democracy with french efficiency that only persists for lack of many natural predators this far north. Habitat 67 is kind of a monument to that absurdity.
Quebec has in some ways paid the price for lethargy, I think due to the resulting institutional inefficiency, it's clearly poor for a more advanced province.
That said - it's hard to fathom how Ontario is that much richer without the indirect stimulus offered by large scale immigration. When newcomers arrive and eventually take out mortgages at inflated prices, we basically print money for those and flush it into the economy.
At the end of the day I'm not sure there's that much difference between Quebec and Ontario.
It has to. For political reasons.
The transfer payments equation basically dictates how much it should spend. If the province got richer it would end up in a situation where it pays more than receive from the federal government. Just imagine the constant electoral adds "instead of hiring X teachers we were forced by the feds to write a check to Newfoundland or some other money pit".
You reporting 50 years later that you wish you could live there (I would also love to), illustrates that this didn't happen.
The choice that other people make does not make the idea worthless or a failure.
- Montreal Olympic Stadium (1976) - one-ton concrete chunks fell down, bonds paid off in 2008.
- Velodrome - one of the most useful Olympic buildings, and best velodrome in the world, converted to zoo in 1989.
- Toronto Harbor Sq. "greenhouse" waterfront condos - grim walk in winter, but went from $50,000 each to $1 million.
- CN Tower - too rugged to tear down in heart of Toronto, savior was emerging need for a giant cell phone tower. :)
*For perspective, I go to Montreal multiple times a year for decades now, and I only went to the biodome once as an adult. If I lived there, I would probably take my kids.
Gotta disagree with the pricing thing though. A quick Google search tells me San Diego zoo is about USD$60/day. NY Botanical Garden is USD$22 (~CAD$28) for the day. The Biodome is CAD$21 (~USD$16.50).