A summer in Montreal
I recently spend five long weeks in my hometown: Montreal. The funny thing is I came to Montreal almost as a foreigner i.e. through the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA) summer research grant program. Indeed, I spend four weeks researching in the CCA’s Study centre with other scholars and students from everywhere in Europe and America. This great experience helped me to somehow see my city through a different lens.
In Montreal – as everywhere else, I assume- some things just don’t change! Yet other things do get better, cleaner, sunnier…Her is a list of my impressions aS a tourist in my own town:
I was impressed by:
-The Quartier des Spectacles and its new place des festivals (http://www.quartierdesspectacles.com/)
-The 747 buses going directly from city centre to Pierre Eliot Trudeau’s airport in less than 20 minutes (and free if you have a public transport card) (http://www.stm.info/english/info/a-747.htm)
-The Bixi (and their successful exportation in many cities such as Washington and now…London!) (http://www.bixi.com/home)
-Some newly refurbished and very colorful parks for children (amongst other in Côte-des-Neige area)
-The mille End neighborhood (especially the English Breakfasts at the Sparrow)
-The new graphic identity of STM (Société des transports de Montréal)
I was not impressed by:
-The number of closed shops and the state of Decay of the Boulevard St-Laurent
-The size of houses (after a few years in Europe, you start wondering how it is possible that people need that much space…)
- Horrible blocks for elderly people such as Vista (an upscale residence for Active Senior) built on the corner of Boul Decarie and Chemin Côte St-Luc…How is this possible?!?
-The quantity of people that still don’t have a mobile phone (hello…its 2010!)
