Montreal (Post 2)
Friday, July24th, 2009
All of these images have been posted to my Facebook and Flickr accounts… but I feel it is a suitable day to post them again (with a bit more color correction). Actually, it was on this day that Charles de Gaulle gave his Vive le Québec libre ! (Long live free Quebec!) speech. This speech further encouraged the Québec Sovereignty movement… and I feel that this spirit of idealism is reflected in the spaces of the city fabric. I’ll make some huge generalizations here about Montreal from the tiny amount of research I have done on its attempt to be re-born. The scale and speed that Montreal was reformed in the 60s is truly remarkable… and if you travel to the city, it is apparent in the city’s metro system, public plazas, and (often) graceless modernist boxes. The above images represent a slice of the concept of public space I experienced while traveling. On one hand, the city is haunted by the empty and clunky buildings of the Olympic stadium. On the other hand, revitalized public spaces draw citizens into high-density housing developments. As I’m sitting at my desk, gazing out my window at the empty/lifeless streets of MPLS I wonder… how refreshing could American cities be if there was a concerted effort to make public spaces desirable, usable, and enjoyable?