The problems of big cities are multiplying. In Montreal as elsewhere.
Although Montreal, let’s agree right away, is not exactly what is called a very big city. Its weak critical mass and its low density prevent it from acquiring, as quickly as it should, more substantial means, particularly in terms of public transport.
Its relatively modest size is nevertheless one of its strengths for the future. But still it would be better to think about this one.
Think about it. There are more than twenty million inhabitants who populate the agglomerations of Mexico City and Mumbai. More than thirty million for Jakarta and its immediate vicinity. More than thirty-five million for that of Tokyo. Closer to home, the urban area of New York has more than twenty million people.
More than half of the globe is piled up in huge cities, where promiscuity promotes overflows of all kinds, including garbage cans. In Paris, waste is piling up. The social mobilization against raising the retirement age also sheds light on overconsumption and its consequences.
4.4 billion people now live in urban areas. In these pockets of heat that cities are becoming, what will happen? Globally, fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce. A quarter of humanity already lacks it. Heat waves, droughts and fires are appearing everywhere. New solidarities need to be rethought and reinvented.
The Montreal agglomeration, in comparison, has just over two million inhabitants. This is little. Really very little. In other words, Montreal is a bit like a big suburb. A suburb planted in the middle of the water. This gives him a considerable advantage. Unlike many cities around the world, it is unlikely to experience drought.
A city of modest size like Montreal allows rich human experiences to be carried out and the results to be judged without delay. Here, do you remember the small disaster caused by the hasty commissioning of poor electric scooters? It was a mistake. An error quickly resolved, after an inconclusive attempt. The city moved on, without too much difficulty. On the other hand, in the heart of the agglomeration of Paris – eleven million inhabitants – it was necessary, to get rid of these nuisances, to have recourse to a laborious referendum process. It is 89% of a very small number of voters who concluded, during a consultation held on April 2, that it was necessary to give up some 15,000 of these devices by September. In the meantime, they must find their way through the accumulating waste.
Several cities around the world have dismissed them, not without difficulty, after also noting the clutter that these scooters generate in public spaces. But everyone does their own thing at their own pace. Thus, Laval, this year, decided to go in the opposite direction, promising in turn public electric scooters.
Montreal has problems. It’s heard. They are numerous. It’s known. Like the housing crisis that continues. How is this possible, while the construction of luxury condominium projects is also increasing?
Next to that, the orange cones appear as a symptom at most. All the same, how is it possible to leave such cones lying around for years without anyone thinking of picking them up? They testify to poorly managed and poorly planned sites. They are the desperate expression of the sad good nature of a village administration which, for decades, reproduced itself with impunity. The dilapidated and haywire side of this city is all the more sadly underlined.
Should we believe that Montreal is the only city in the world where there are potholes even on speed bumps?
All cities today have their share of problems. Problems often more serious than those experienced by Montreal. I was talking about water. It’s everywhere, except here. It may come. We should think about it.
What reservoir of possibilities can we now dive into to revitalize our common future?
Many cities, in any case, now advance like zombies in the middle of the night. They can no longer connect what they were or what they believed to be with what they have become. Their future seems to be cut off from their past, to the point that we see them drifting into an insignificant present.
A woman, Nathalie Thibault, told me how she made an incredible discovery in the garbage cans. A few days ago, during a trip to Costa Rica, she got her hands on a photo signed by the great Josephine Baker. The photo had simply been thrown away, as if it represented nothing.
In France, Joséphine Baker was inducted into the Panthéon in 2021. This American has contributed, through her humanism, to the fight for diversity. Today, certain representatives of the most corrosive conservative right, always very busy, according to their words, with “protecting our children”, would undoubtedly have had him shot for his costumes and his morals.
Josephine Baker raised twelve children, adopted from all over the world. One of them had been found in the street, still a baby, under a pile of rubbish. And it is indeed under the rubbish that part of our common history, of our humanity, of our solidarity, is today thrown away.
How can we succeed in linking, in our societies, the best of yesterday with what we have become today?
We are everywhere in deficit of the past. We live in a kind of hollow perpetual present. “When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness”, said Tocqueville. Perhaps it would be necessary, to start, to find a path between the garbage and the orange cones?