Montreal is what North America could be
loukidelis.com
loukidelis.com
> Don’t get me wrong, I think highrise condos and single family detached homes have their place. Lots of people want a large home with a lawn. But more than anything people want an affordable place to live, close to their work, their family, friends, etc. There's a reason the realtor's motto is location, location, location. It would be nice if detached homes and condo towers weren’t essentially the only two housing options in most of North America. It would be nice if more people could live where they want to live. I imagine that if people were given the option to live in the kinds of communities that I found in Montreal, many – not all, of course! – would.
I have also been watching videos on YouTube by a channel called "Oh The Urbanity!" which is about urban design and how cities can be made more walkable, bikeable, and all around easier and safer to get around in. They often highlight Montreal in their videos, and it's made me want to visit for a week just to experience what it would be like living in such a city. [1] is a video that had some particularly strong arguments that I enjoyed.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2021001/article... https://spvm.qc.ca/upload/02/2021_Activity_Report_SPVM_EN_VF...
"À Montréal, en 2021, ceux-ci ont augmenté de 17,3 % par rapport à la moyenne de 2016 à 2020. Les homicides et les tentatives de meurtre ont augmenté de façon importante et la problématique de la violence armée contribue très certainement à ce portrait. En effet, la moitié des homicides et des tentatives de meurtre commis sur le territoire du SPVM en 2021 impliquait la présence ou l’utilisation d’une arme à feu (voir tableau Armes à feu). La problématique de la violence armée demeure au centre des préoccupations du SPVM. "
Homicide rate per 100,000 population in 2021 [1]: - Montreal 1.11 - Toronto 2.08 - Vancouver 2.16
The US average hovers around 5 [2].
[1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=351000...
[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
However summers are lovely albeit short, old Montreal is cute, and yes, cousine is delicious.
> They are dominated by detached homes, often set back from the road by lawns. Multi-family housing is generally confined to the downtown, and mainly comes in the form of high-rise towers.
This certainly doesn't describe Chicago at all, or even nearby suburbs. It seems like a third of the makeup of Chicago neighborhoods are three-floor walkups and courtyard buildings, right next to single-family housing. The high-rises are where upper-middle class people from out of town move to (and overpay for) because they've been filled with mythical tales of superpredators.
Take where I live - Seattle - and the criticism makes a lot more sense. I live in a neighborhood about two blocks from a light rail stop and still walk by single family homes on relatively large plots on my walk from door to door. In nearly any direction, you are within a block or two of what one would say looks like a suburban single family home. There is the concept of "urban villages" which are small pockets of multi-family housing surrounded by low density housing.
I have a strong conviction that the reason Montreal housing is cheaper is in no small part because of the language barrier. Even if you could work remotely, why would you move somewhere you don't speak the primary language, surrounded by people that are somewhat hostile? It's a much smaller market.
I live in Chicago, in a three floor walkup three blocks from an El station, and walk by dozens of single family homes on the way there. There are single-family homes everywhere, it's very difficult not to be within 100 feet of one.
Are single-family homes the enemy? I think they're nice.
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edit: Houston and LA are notably strange places. I'd add Nashville into that, which turns into what seems like Russian doll-nested suburbs right after you leave downtown.
Houston is what gets held up by house-building anti-zoning advocates as a model, though, for some reason. To me, it's always been a hellhole, but I haven't visited for years.
I think more and more single-family homes have to be the enemy, because there must always be an Other preventing your paradise from being reality.
The author is Canadian and it seems like he's taking a lot of his perspective from Toronto, which is actually kind of bizarre in that it has clusters of high rises with single family homes in between, and leafy suburban neighborhoods right around downtown.
The question I'd have is how close is a non single-family dwelling (exclude duplexes, too) - I'm in a relatively low density ruralish town, and there's an apartment building a block away on one side, and three on another.
You can totally get by in Montreal speaking English only.
Here’s the CEO of Air Canada, Michael Rousseau, on how he’s managed to thrive in Montreal without knowing French working for a legislatively bilingual organization: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/air-canada-ceo-1.6393063
> Even if you could work remotely, why would you move somewhere you don't speak the primary language
Immigrating to Quebec from outside of Canada is difficult since they have a system to keep non-French speakers from moving there.
However, doctors now have to be able to communicate in French and English along with any other language they wish.
Independence sentiment in a province annexed through war, even if it was long ago, and that has kept a different identity, has very little too do with racism it seems to me.
As someone who lived in Canada but isn't Canadian, there is so much disinformation regarding Québec in the rest of Canada, and not uncommonly outright hate, that the often heard claims of racism are very ironic.
In this case, the "missing middle" is what cheaper living looks like outside of a big city center. In the big cities, high rises are used because the city is literally out of space. Outside of a big city, single family homes are more popular because people almost unanimously want to live in them. But those who can't afford to live in a single family home, but live outside of a large city--those people live in places that look exactly like all the "missing middle" pictures in the article. Nothing in there looked unusual to me. I used to live in places like those. Now I don't, because I upgraded to a single family home.
I find it a little odd that the assumption is that single family homes are somehow always superior. That is not the case in a lot of the world. It’s not true in New York. It’s certainly not true in most cities outside the US and Canada. Perhaps instead of assuming everybody fits into this world view, we can accommodate other perspectives?
As for why single family housing is looked upon negatively, it’s simply inefficient. It’s inefficient for heating,for transportation, for land usage. It lends itself to cars more than public transportation, which, no matter how many teslas are sold, is a net negative. In my experience in the US, it also leads to enclaves, the so called gated community. I’m not certain if that’s just due to a history of racist housing policies or just a feature of suburbia but it’s worth noting.
That said I don’t think we’re in danger of eliminated single family housing anytime soon. Indeed the thing about single family housing is that it’s the easiest form of housing. Someone buys land and builds a house. It’s not so easy to make an apartment building.
“Superior” is a value judgement. I think “preferred” is closer to the mark. People like single-family homes and they go to great lengths to buy them and deal with the externalities of living in them (commuting, maintenance). As the externalities lessened (broader acceptance of working remotely), SFH became more valuable in the last two years.
> It’s not true in New York.
There are great swathes of lower-density housing in New York and its surrounding region. NYC is an outlier on account of its geography and place in the economy.
> Perhaps we can engage with the material without insulting the people behind it. It’s not exactly a compelling argument.
I think it was an appropriate way to engage with an article that takes “people would rather live in mixed-density neighborhoods than single family homes” as its premise. The revealed preference of the entire post-WW2 era in North America is mostly the opposite of this assertion. In general, as society has gotten richer more people have looked to own single family homes.
But with the rise of climate change, ever-growing traffic and commute, urban sprawl, and expensive housing, things are starting to shift in the other way. This narrative does not exist in the vacuum, it's been over a decade of Strong Towns, walkability, more bike lanes, millennials not owning cars, and other assorted trends pushing against the postwar status.
> as society has gotten richer more people have looked to own single family homes.
And society's purchasing power has not exactly risen in line with housing costs, especially since 2008.
I'm not sure they are right, but your characterization isn't what they mean.
There's a growing demand for mid-density mixed-use land because younger generations cannot afford SFHs, more incline to take public transportation, more things to do, pub/bars/live music than SFH with backyards that caters more to families with kids.
Urban sprawl happened for many decades because of cheap and abundance of land, less population so gridlocks are not as big of a deal. But now it's very hard to change the zoning or land-use to increase the density because of NIMBYs, even for suburbs that are within miles from downtown core.
So yeah, try to understand instead of just attacking them as "without brains".
Closely related are the people who ask over and over again why everyone in the US can't ride bikes like they do in Belgium. I'll tell you why - my backyard is bigger than Belgium. But don't worry, once the typical HN reader hits 65 you will see a sharp decline in the suggestions that everyone ride bikes everywhere.
Some of us want: a yard. A garage. Space between us and a neighbor. Enough room for a family of four.
I absolutely don't see the StrongTowns model as an unassailable good - I have no desire to share a wall with my neighbors.
These are only unmet demands limited to a few cities that young wealthy educated surburbanites flocked to as a group, thereby making them very expensive. Instead of detailing my unremarkable life, apartment, and neighborhood in Chicago. I'll just say that not everybody has to live in SF, Seattle, Austin, or whatever the next desirable place is. If you can't afford it, there are other places available. It isn't like there aren't tech jobs in Chicago, or remote.
That's easy to say, but prior to the pandemic and the sudden shift to WFH, the trend was flying in the face of this droll advice. Tech hubs are consolidating. But since then, we've seen transplants buy up housing in other markets and simply spread the same issues of traffic and housing prices there too, as we've seen in markets like Phoenix, Boise, Salt Lake City, (though admittedly some of these are starting to fall). Take people out of Austin and they just end up flooding Nashville, or Raleigh, or Charlotte. New Yorkers are resettling in Philadelphia. Peter Thiel says Florida real estate prices are comparable to California now. And so on.
Most of Asia, single family homes are just huge apartments with good soundproofing. There's literally no reason they have to be detached homes all you have to do is build bigger apartments.
There's so many benefits - shared spaces are better because a lot of families contribute, easier access to the city for parents and kids, potentially eliminates the need for a car as well.
Single Family Homerism is very popular among boomers who have never been to Europe or Asia.
This desire isn't, like, innate to the human condition, though. It's the outcome of a long history of social, cultural, and economic policy. What people want is generally nurture, not nature.
It's weird that I've made it nearly a half-century without owning a car. Edit: Sarcasm aside, I think you're critiquing a abstraction conjured by political rhetoric. I've walked every street of Chicago. In Chicago, every four blocks in every direction is a commercial street.
They want the low-crime high value suburban life in a dense environment, and that's what they often can't find. It can be really hard to get this out of them, you basically have to keep providing examples of what they say they want until they finally break down and admit why they don't work.
I think it describes the suburbs that a lot of these people are from. I don't think it characterizes North American cities, which this article definitely thinks it does. I was struggling to find anything distinct between Montreal and Chicago from all of these pictures. And I've lived in a lot of different large, small, and medium-sized US cities in my twisty journey from Chicago to Chicago, although my only coastal cities are Portland, OR and Baltimore.
I think the Toronto distribution (which I'm willing to assume is accurately described) is probably characteristic of a particular very rapid growth pattern with a particular income distribution, rather than some North American collective mistake.
It does match my experience in several large and medium size US cities though. Of the biggest, NYC and Chicago no, LA and Houston yes. DFW, Atlanta, SF (sort of), DFW, Phoenix, etc.
I've seen far, far more terrible suburb patterns than good ones I guess, which does seem to be the collective NA mistake, from a city planning/growth point of view. Definite skew to the west, especially cities that didn't really grow until after cars were plentiful. My guess is this is mostly why NYC and Chicago are different than LA and Houston in that respect.
Probably because a good portion of things were built pre-WW2:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0
Anything post-WW2, which is probably most of (North) America, had a more car-centric design.
That said, it isn't fair to compare housing costs between Quebec cities and Ontario ones. Land tax is much, much higher in Quebec to the point where even just across the river from Ottawa you'll see 2x housing differentials. Add in language laws of Quebec which, I'm actually in favour of, and you'll end up with parents preferring Ontario even when they have a choice of where to live for work.
Lastly, the scale on those maps matter. Montreal is much smaller than Toronto. My home city has a bunch of condo buildings, yes, but they aren't all surrounded directly by suburban homes. There are a decent number of midrises and row houses, though not as much as I would hope for. But when looking at maps, it's important to keep in mind the absolute SCALE of Toronto. Toronto is HUGE. Only two American cities beat it out in size, New York and LA. Montreal has more midrises around its core in large part because its core is so small and that is the natural function of the mathematics of things. In Toronto we build our core up, up, up. Over twenty-five buildings are over 200 meters tall, compared to Montreal's measly two.
We can learn from some of the things Montreal does right, and I agree their midrises are generally speaking better than ours, but it's more complicated than this article makes it out to be, even if there are real lessons to glean from its good faith take.
A tourist’s view (spending one whole week) is not representative of living there and should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
Great to visit in the summer though!
Love Quebec City though, even if they were burning American flags there the two times I visited on Jean Baptiste day.
Not the point at all.
Montréal is unique. It's the only American city with both french and english cultures living hand in hand. It's also great for novel cuisine, micro. It has 4 full seasons do you can practice almost any sports and neat mountain ranges with amazing wildlife just an hour away to the north.
I’ve enjoyed many months in Quebec (I went to Med School in Vermont and went up there many times) but I never got Montreal. Totally acknowledge I might have just not have spent enough time in the right areas.
Montreal has lots of corruption[1]. Most of it is related to public construction and activities of traditional organized crime (Mafia and Camorra). But these are "lots" by the civilized Canadian standards, Montreal is still better than the overwhelming majority of the world. Besides, when it comes to Mafia/Camorra activities, Toronto is not much better. Also, when it comes to government relations with party donors, I think Alberta just does a better work of hiding corruption, it is rotten all the same.
"Without strong industry" means that Montreal lost its manufacturing sector to China and Mexico, like so many North American cities. However I'd argue that the city has managed to develop a good technology sector (particularly in software) and an active cultural industry.
"Including some pretty intense language laws" is probably the most correct sentence above. The language laws in Quebec are, IMO, very stupid. But, because Montreal is the place with most Anglophones in Quebec, the city is were the anachronism of these laws becomes more obvious.
[1] https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-most-corrupt-provinc...
But nowadays, Toronto/Waterloo/Vancouver are way ahead. Even Ottawa and Calgary is catching up.
The missing middle of housing is what Vancouver could take from Montreal as the article states. The other thing it could take is the events (F1, ComedyFest, JazzFest, etc)
Skytrain, buses, and YVR are much better compared to Montreal.
It's a tossup as to which city is more corrupt with government-granted oligopolies and rent-seeking.
https://montreal.citynews.ca/2022/05/08/quebec-language-law-...
I was born and grew up in a very dense, urban city in Europe, and I love big, dense cities. They feel fun and lively, while suburbs feel empty and eerie. On the other hand my wife grew up in the countryside, so for her suburbs are quite and peaceful while cities are dirty and noisy.
Also one can cherry pick beautiful/horrible examples of any kind to make their point.
not criticizing the post, and it's one of my favourite cities to live. but the problems are coming here too.
Some people don't like urban super-metropolises at all. Even if they are really polite. Or nice like Montreal not like Toronto.
In population, the US and Canada are dominated by mega-cities. But in number of communities, cities are dwarfed by towns and rural areas. You must remember there is enough open space here to live affordably in small distributed communities. Cities don't need to be better, they need to go away.
The authors best argument seems to be well connected public transport but that argument falls pretty quickly if you go outside the core. Suburbs like Laval land Brossard are just as bad and take over an hour to reach downtown. And there is enormous amount of corruption- most of past Montreal mayors have faced corruption charges , it is so ingrained.
It's not just cars to move people. It's getting water to each house. And electrical to each house (hope it survives that recent storm!) And groceries to each house. And fire department coverage of each house. And Ambulance coverage to each house. And kids to school from each house. It's just a million things that are all made less efficient by choice.
And honestly, fine! Allow the people who want cars and SFH to have cars and SFH. But the problem that people ignore is that cars and SFH are the only affordable option in most of North America because of intentional policy choices and that is what articles like this are fighting.
Single family homes in high-demand/land-constrained cities often make up >66% of the allowed zoning (see San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, etc); By definition this is not a good allotment of land and resources in high demand areas (you are fitting 1 family where you could fit 2-4 families with little immediate change in the neighborhood).
No one is saying ban building of single family homes, but the amount of land exclusively zoned for single family homes in high demand areas needs to be rebalanced -- if you want the conveniences of a single family home in an urban city, you should be prepared to pay for it (think Upper East Side brownstones), or move further outside the city. But there is no reason that the vast majority of homes in a city MUST be single family homes.
I say this as someone who owns a single family home in Los Angeles, and supported the conversion directly next door to me of a single family home into what is now a four-plex.
As a kid I was able to walk and bike into school. The independence was great and I had lots of adventures on the way home with my friends on the way back from school. Only when we moved to a single family home further away from school I had to rely on the bus that only came once an hour and even more infrequent when its later in the afternoon, I saw my friends less.
This just a stupid anecdote of mine but I do see the pattern: people that live further away, see each other less and do less together. I can walk 5 min to the subway station and be at the front door of any circa 1.5m people in my city within 30 minutes. Not possible with detached housing. Subways only make sense in somewhat denser environments.
This all before talking about energy efficiency. Since I have other tenants left and right of me, I basically don't didn't even need to turn the heating on that much last winter.
Also I can walk to the corner of the city block and get fresh and warm bread from my favorite bakery. It's also right opposite of a very good pizza place. Not possible in suburbia.
If I wanna see some green and meet friends to play volleyball or a picnic I go to the public park instead of my private garden. The park is maintained by professional landscapers and gardeners, I wouldn't even have the time to care about my own garden.
I would suffer horribly in detached home suburbia and also have a far larger environmental footprint, so why do it?
So yeah there's a huge Brain Drain from Anglo/English speaking Immigrant populations, as well as people fed up with the corruption.
Also please be more skeptical of thoughts of the form "X is Y because of hot take Z". Reality is complex and things have many causes. Montreal has a long history of doing city planning differently than other cities in Canada.
The only thing i feel like parent could be referring to is the language laws, but the reasoning here is that they are necessary when surrounded by english (and has nothing to do with race). Plus language laws are barely respected already.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-real-estate...
As for examples of xenophobia, I don't know of any other places where they have a separate language police, I know personally of non-white owned stores being harassed and fined for having the wrong accent on their french sign. There are countless politicians who've blamed immigrants for their woes, Jacques Parizeau being a famous one for blaming the Ethnic votes for their loss. CAQ just took a majority, look up Bill 21.
Anglo Brain Drain is a real thing too, and it's the major thing that's on some community's mind https://montrealgazette.com/news/brain-drain-brain-gain
Dense downtown core, though Toronto has more people living there versus just offices. (Though that's been changing for a while now in Chicago). Similar scope of mass transit, where the trains don’t reach big chunks of what used to be suburbs and surrounding communities. Similar population. Great big ol’ lake right there.
It's also not as good is insulating for things like sound. Maybe that's a cultural difference. What part of France were a lot of the immigrants to Montreal originally from?
...your pay is also half the amount.
Metro/Buses are great (except in the West Island of course)
Get wrecked, leafs!