My first professional trip was to the eco-district of Ørestad, in Copenhagen. I remember a remarkable planning. A large area to be redeveloped, structuring public transport, the best sustainable development practices, innovative schools on the site, landscaped parks, completed services and an architectural competition to choose the various promoters who would have the chance to find there. What an example these Danes are!
And yet, I especially remember those spaces so big that they give the impression of being empty. From the lack of life. From my feeling of boredom walking from one super-island to another. Rare cafes, organic, but not very busy. While everyone was enthusiastic about Scandinavian know-how, I couldn’t share their enthusiasm or explain to myself the source of my disappointment. It was cerebrally stimulating to visit these places, but I did not want to linger there.
This planning represented the dream of any promoter, but was the human and urban experience increased? Did we feel better there? Did we want to live there, walk there, stroll there?
I am well aware that Scandinavian development is praised by the whole world and I recognize its merits. The intervention of the authorities upstream to build infrastructures, services and offer public transport is essential for developing large-scale projects. However, I could not help but conclude that Ørestad lacked soul.
It was during a trip dedicated to architecture, in Rotterdam this time, that I understood what made spaces warmer. I walked into a large, crowded cafe and felt at home right away. I paid attention to the aged floors, to the sometimes peeling paint on the columns, to the magnificent light that came through the large, slightly dirty paned windows… and I realized that it is in these small imperfections that the places become endearing.
PHOTO VERÓNICA PÉREZ TEJEDA, PRESS ARCHIVES
The Fenix Food Factory, in Rotterdam
Although Rotterdam too has bet on signature architecture, it is the bottom-up approach, commonly referred to as bottom-up approach, which caught my attention. This idea that citizens must assume a shared and active responsibility in urban vitality. And that popular initiatives are decisive for the success of our communities, from a social, economic and cultural point of view.
In Rotterdam, this approach is ubiquitous and results in many eclectic interventions. The invasion of the banks by small markets. Exterior art. Temporary buildings. Spontaneous terraces.
The rehabilitation by the population of an old railway to make it an area of urban agriculture; citizen’s version of New York’s High Line. It was less smooth, less maintained, less organized, but it was alive, felt, sincere. We wanted to get involved, to participate in our own way, to add our touch. As if the fact that it’s not perfectly executed inspired us and made us want to put our two cents in it.
And I want to tell us that here, in Montreal, we don’t have to be complexed. We have them, those imperfections that make us want to belong. These spaces which are sufficiently arranged to be pleasant, but which make people want to appropriate the public space, to arrange it in their image, to invent it according to the time or the use. Our alleys are great examples of this. Our banks of the Lachine Canal too. In reality, it is the people who make the city. Their involvement, their desire for complicity, their complicity, their inventiveness of places. Their desire to spend time there, to open up to possibilities, to strangers, to chance.
When it’s too perfect, too finished, too polished, there’s no room for improvisation. There is no more room for authenticity. Isn’t this true for places as much as it is for humans? Don’t we prefer people who have a few faults rather than those who claim to be irreproachable?
Our Montreal is imperfect and that’s why we love it. It still has plenty of places to develop that are just waiting to be animated. We have, at home, this expertise and the groups capable of supporting collective ambitions. All that remains is to give ourselves the flexibility to adapt the regulatory framework and relax the usual standards to allow for originality.
At a time when we are redeveloping large urban areas, shouldn’t we make sure to create places that can be appropriated, to leave less planned space to open the door to citizen creativity? Give us the desire to get involved, to have ideas and to make them a reality.
Let’s bring life to these imperfect places. Let’s get out our picnic tables, our sprouts, our fairy lights and our bottles of wine. Let our kids build tree houses, lemonade stands and roller skate ramps.
Let’s take ownership of our imperfect city.