Professor at UQAM for almost 50 years (since 1976), I saw the Department of Urban and Tourism Studies, which I founded there, move from Phillips Square to the Judith-Jasmin Pavilion, east of rue Saint-Denis, then to the Atriums, boulevard de Maisonneuve, and then to the “R” management sciences building, rue Sainte-Catherine. It will soon move to 1250 rue Sanguinet. This will make five different locations in 50 years.
However, I heard about the UQAM campus (or lack of campus) as early as 1968-1970, when I was studying at the Urban Planning Institute of the University of Montreal. One of my professors, Michel Lincourt, was then working on a futuristic project for UQAM, which consisted of breaking down the concept of campus by dispersing its various pavilions across Montreal while connecting them directly to the metro and providing registered students with at UQAM a free pass allowing them to move from one pavilion to another using the metro.
The free pass never saw the light of day, but the idea of dispersal and connection to the metro has left its mark, for better and for worse. Indeed, the “campus life” that so many students around the world have fond memories of has always been shaky at UQAM.
No one enrolls at UQAM for the quality of their “campus life”, for multiple reasons. The direct connection to the metro allows you to leave the pavilions as quickly as you arrive there. The virtual absence of greenery prevents socializing and relaxing in the sun. The scattering of the pavilions hinders interactions. Add to this the disparate, unimaginative and bland architecture of the pavilions, as well as the very frequent recourse to facadeism, aimed at preserving traces of the past with the result that passers-by can pass in front of many UQAM pavilions without realize that they are in a university area.
Here we touch on one of the objectives that our university set itself by choosing to settle in the former “Latin Quarter” of the University of Montreal, namely the desire to breathe new life into the latter, which was then facing decline, impoverishment, homelessness and flight of investors.
Since then, the struggle between the objective of revitalizing the neighborhood and the strong trends towards devitalization has seen some “ups” and, unfortunately, many “downs”. Today, we are on the edge of the precipice to which, more than any other factor, the refusal in 2005 of Jean Charest’s government to support the UQAM Îlot Voyageur project led us at the very moment when it favored the construction of the Longueuil campus of the University of Sherbrooke.
If we can doubt that this last campus changed anything in the development of Longueuil, there is no doubt that the refusal to finance the Îlot Voyageur project strongly contributed to the financial difficulties of UQAM and, above all, has more than contributed to the current decline of the neighborhood around it.
What should UQAM do in these circumstances? In my opinion, it must give absolute priority to the creation of a real campus bringing together the Latin Quarter pole – which the Plante administration wants to designate as a “Francophonie district”, with the creation of a “24 hour” zone. » — and that of its Science Complex, delimited by Président-Kennedy, Jeanne-Mance, Sherbrooke and Saint-Urbain streets, by marking the space so that passers-by know that they are crossing a real campus when they pass through it. are doing, by relying as much, if not more, on the creation of green spaces as on buildings, by showing architectural audacity when it comes to constructing new buildings, etc.
UQAM can only save the Latin Quarter by showing itself for what it is, a major Montreal university, and by ceasing to be too little visible to Montrealers.
In the competition between the Institute of Urban Planning and the Department of Urban and Tourism Studies, the only clear advantage that the Institute had was the fact that, in order to attract new students, it only had to show the UdeM campus, to organize “open days” and to show its new premises and its well-lit workshops, something that in 48 years the Department of Urban and Tourism Studies has never been able to TO DO.
Things like this should never happen again.