Local thinkers | Guillaume Ethier: the inhabited city

The intellectual geography of Quebec is being redefined. In this series, our collaborator Jérémie McEwen introduces us to essayists who think about the contemporary world.

Do you remember, barely two years ago, when the streets were deserted in downtown Montreal? We were afraid to leave our homes, but quietly the neighborhood parks have become perhaps more than ever these places of meetings, walks, necessary sociability in person of the human being. It is of this urban sociability that Guillaume Ethier’s little book speaks, The analog cityrecently published by Atelier 10.

It is part of the collection of essays entitled “Documents”, which has become essential for lovers of ideas in Quebec and of which it is the 21^e copy. Many classics to be read by everyone have appeared there, starting with the defense of polyamory by the outgoing solidarity deputy Catherine Dorion (The fruitful struggles), then the plea for social collaboration and against atomization in the realization of anything, even for the repair of a toaster (The fair shareDavid Robichaud and Patrick Turmel), passing by the apology of veganism that I have my students read, about which they take a real pleasure in debating (Philosophy at the slaughterhouseChristiane Bailey and Jean-François Labonté).

Yes, this series is a collection of solution essays. Like solution journalism, which has been an integral part of the field for several years, we are following the trend here by offering concrete answers to contemporary problems.

And it works: they have been among the best-selling essays for 10 years now in the province. It is indeed extremely satisfying, in one afternoon (these books are always less than 100 pages), to be exposed to a clear and embodied point of view, assumed in its positions, vis-à-vis which one can -even position yourself by closing it at aperitif time.

Guillaume Ethier takes the lead by offering what made me think, while reading it, of a bike ride in the Montreal of Valérie Plante. The day before my reading, I was strolling in one of the new cycle paths that appeared under his reign and I began to reflect on the lasting mark that his administration is beginning to leave on the metropolis. “It’s hell driving down to Saint-Denis” is a sentence that I heard a little, some time ago, but it tends to disappear. Habits change. Did Guillaume Ethier write the mayor’s little orange book? A little, but not quite. In any case, it’s a very Montreal book.

The author is consulted by the City in its plans, and although he recognizes himself in the recent achievements of Projet Montréal, he also pleads “for a little more informality” in urban development. “You have to trust people”, he insisted on the phone, “to move a table, a chair”, when we tend to fix everything to the ground for fear of I don’t know what. In his brochure, there is talk, for example, of a bar in Beirut that he frequented (his master’s thesis concerns this city) and whose owner trusted customers to keep track of their consumption over the evening. He finds the equivalent of this informality in the Champ des Possibles, at the crossroads of Mile End and Petite-Patrie, and where free and colorful gatherings take place regularly.

Walk around the city

The concrete examples of what the expression “analog city” means will mark the reader. The phrase arose as a counterbalance to an eagerness to make any city “smart” just because it sounds smart. What’s the point of connecting everything and nothing in a city, when the information is available either in the bottom of your pocket or by simply asking a question to a human being? Conversely, going for a walk without taking out your phone is a lived moment embodied in the city, intuitively and concretely.

I really recognized myself in this idea of ​​contemplative wandering. At the corner of a street, at a red light, do not take out your camera and rather look around you, make yourself available to meet, to reflect.

We will have the impression of having slowed down time, neither more nor less. If everything is going too fast, it’s often good because we want it to, and it’s important to remember that.

Another example that spoke to me even more, because I had never thought of it, even though I had experienced it: fountains in parks. Let’s say that of the square Saint-Louis, whose layout is inspired by the English squares of the 19th^e century, the author taught me. The sound of the central fountain serves to create partitions between conversations, from one bench to another. We thus have an intimacy, a bubble if you will, while being in a public place. It rhymes with something like an inversion of the public and the private, whereas, in our home offices, we remain in contact with the world like never before. And if the reinvestment of the park was a reinvention of the private sector? Skillful deconstruction.

Each semester, Ethier assigns this assignment to his first semester urban planning students at UQAM. He invites them to take a 30-minute walk in their neighborhood, noting what marks them from the point of view of the five senses. And things stand out: such a place stinks, we don’t go there. One place lets hear the song of the birds, while the wind blows stronger in another. And coming back to class at the next session, he asks them: could you have become aware of these things if you had not done this walk? Subtext: can urban planning exist from the top of an office in the city center? Of course not. The analog city is lived in nuance, in relief, in conversation with everyone, far from the digital spats that isolate us from each other.

The analog city

Guillaume Ethier

Workshop 10

100 pages