Air quality has deteriorated sharply on several occasions in recent weeks due to forest fires. The characteristic smell of fine toxic particles produced by the combustion of wood reminds us how precious it is to live in an environment capable of guaranteeing us breathable air. On days when it sucks, the alerts to the reduction of physical activities are heard. Is right. It is proven that the risks associated with cardiorespiratory problems increase dramatically during periods of smog.
I won’t tell anyone anything by saying that it’s less hot during a heat wave when you’re in a park with trees. It’s quite the opposite in a treeless city center covered in tarmac and concrete. This well-known phenomenon called urban heat island (UHI) mainly owes its existence to the fact of a very impermeable development with little greenery.
To explain it even more simply, an ICU is a space in which the ambient temperature is artificially higher than the recorded normal. In the worst case, the recorded temperature can be 10 to 20 degrees higher, depending on the type of layout chosen. However, when it is very hot, the fine particles of smog become even more toxic for living beings. Result: there is then an increase in hospitalizations and an explosion in health costs.
Last week, I spoke to you about the importance of having reliable data in hand to better plan the adaptation of cities in the face of the climate crisis. If you take the time to go for a walk on the City of Montreal’s open data site, you will find a map of UHIs throughout the territory. By cross-referencing this information and the socio-economic territorial data also available, we quickly see that the least welcoming living environments because of their UHIs are mainly found in the most disadvantaged sectors of the city.
Faced with the climate crisis, disadvantaged populations are more vulnerable. We are not equal to rising temperatures. Other data show us that between a person who lives in Hochelaga and a person who lives in Outremont, the life expectancy of the former is less by about 10 years. Poor air quality is largely responsible for this discrepancy.
When there will be regular peaks of 50 degrees at the start of 2050, in Quebec, it is the most vulnerable people who will suffer the most. The climate crisis is and will remain one of the biggest threats to social inequality. This is why we must do everything we can to counter the negative effects of poor land use planning.
To see the detail of the portrait of inequalities due to development, just look at a satellite map that shows the Town of Mount Royal and the Parc-Extension district side by side. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. On either side of boulevard de l’Acadie, you will see an entire city filled with lush greenery that contrasts with the dull gray of the concrete and asphalt of the entire adjacent neighborhood, and this, without ever mixing. I repeat, we are not equal in the face of the climate crisis, and it is obvious here.
We must quickly find solutions to prevent this injustice from growing further due to global warming. Hence the importance of planning our facilities with data that allows us to better predict the future. If I insist a lot on this issue, it is because it is not by making blind decisions that we will find solutions to such complex problems.
The adaptation of cities to the climate crisis is imperative. To achieve this, it will be necessary to achieve an inclusive ecological transition. In other words, this means that we will have to avoid the direct and indirect negative effects of our management decisions. Above all, it will be imperative to stop repeating the mistakes that have brought us to the edge of the climatic precipice.
Unfortunately, when you change the layout of a neighborhood to improve the lot of the most disadvantaged people who live there, you sometimes notice unintended negative effects. An increase in the quality of life in a sector can thus fuel real estate speculation. Through flips and other undesirable transactional maneuvers, vulnerable people can suffer from the situation, even being expelled from the neighborhood. This phenomenon is called eco-gentrification.
A flip is almost always achieved by evicting disadvantaged tenants to resell renovated apartments at a high price and too often converted into undivided co-ownerships. These large profits made, coupled with the net loss of rental housing, will fuel unsustainable speculation for the poorest populations. It is indeed a vector that leads directly to the housing crisis that we are experiencing.
In other words, if we want to prevent the most vulnerable people from being evicted from their neighborhood once their living environment has been greened, measures must be taken to prevent them from being evicted. There are never quick fixes to problems as complex as housing. On the other hand, at a time when we are experiencing a major housing crisis in Quebec, I see an extraordinary opportunity to respond in part to the phenomenon of eco-gentrification by linking our greening strategies and our housing strategies more closely.
CEO of the Institute for Urban Resilience and Innovation, professor and associate researcher, François William Croteau was mayor of Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie.