Many claim that Montreal is no longer livable. Me, pure Montrealer, in love with my city, I see my feelings waver recently. Not to the point of leaving her, where would I go, but let’s say very concerned about her future.
Let’s drop the pink glasses. Montreal is doing badly, the city is struggling to recover from a crisis exacerbated by the pandemic. Its city center is looking for itself, the housing crisis weighs on it, it is dirty, it is losing many of its lifeblood, especially families from the French-speaking middle class, insecurity is growing in certain neighborhoods, the French language is gradually receding there.
The recent symbol of all these ills is the pitiful state of the once French-speaking center of Montreal, around Place Émilie-Gamelin, which has become a disaster zone, with its boarded up shops and its permanent human misery.
Yet even this corner will pull through. Too well located, with already the elements of a significant cultural pole: the BAnQ, the UQAM, the Cinémathèque, the Espace St-Denis. He will end up escaping his fate the day a developer builds a condo tower. A bit like the legendary Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, long court of miracles, but which, for three years, begins to gentrify. The condos will upset the fabric of this district and mark its transformation, which will not go smoothly: where will the badly caught go? Are the towers the soul and the future of Montreal?
And like this multipoque zone, the city will pull through. We are already seeing areas that were once in disrepair come back to life, think of the sparkling new Chinatown that is thriving on Sainte-Catherine West near Atwater. It is often gentrification that kicks off the revival of stretches of streets, which triggers revitalization. Afterwards, politicians took an interest in it, introduced traffic calming measures and cycle paths. But the movement to redesign places too often starts with daring citizens, then developers with a keen flair who seize the opportunities.
What will be the nature, the originality of Montreal in the future, in America and in the world? Its distinction was its assumed French-speaking character, its humanity; breaths of fresh air in an English-speaking continent.
In 20 years, what will distinguish it, make its flavor? It will not just be the fact of being densified and subscribing to mobility. All major cities, from Paris to Portland, from Copenhagen to Philadelphia, have made this necessary shift. It won’t be enough to keep us unique and desirable.
Right now, in this slightly cowboy Montreal, there isn’t much of a clear vision for the future, other than the necessary but all-encompassing notion of mobility. What Montreal do we want? What city will we live in 10 or 20 years, and at what human cost? Inhabited by whom? With what flavor, in what language? At the moment, politicians are clearly behind the deep demographic movements that are upsetting the contours of the city, whether it be immigration or the phenomenon of flight to the outside, even beyond the suburbs. Do we want a city designed (!!!) by property developers? The questions are legion when you look ahead, on a not so distant horizon.
Do we want a city that, even more than today, drives away the middle classes, less fortunate tenants, families? Montreal, like many big cities, is on its way to being for the rich… and the very poor.
It is fundamental to ask what its role will be in relation to Quebec. By its demographics, the metropolis not only stands out, but also moves further and further away from it. She is unloved, looked down upon, snubbed, but she also isolates herself, if only by becoming a little more anglicized each year.
Montreal is no longer, for a long time, the showcase of a French-speaking Quebec, in connection with the regions, but a strange bug that has less and less to do with the rest of Quebec.
We live there, we vote differently, both provincially and federally. The CAQ can thrive in the province without having significant representation there. The vast majority of newcomers are concentrated there, helping to redefine the social fabric of Greater Montreal. Neither Montreal nor Quebec benefits from developing in parallel, from experiencing mutual incomprehension.
The crisis that Montreal is currently going through, because it is one, is certainly economic and social. But above all, it is identity. Where did his soul go? What will become, deeply, fundamentally, of this city? The answer does not belong to promoters or politicians alone. They alone do not hold the keys to the future. It concerns all Montrealers. A clue: it will go through our assumed French-speaking character. Let’s say there is work…