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Montreal is what North America could be

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Re: Montreal is what North America could be

#81

Post by kolanos »

pessimizer wrote: post #78
joshl32532 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can argue against someone's opinion, but you shouldn't degrade their intellect to make your point. There's a growing demand for mid-density mixed-use land because younger generations cannot afford SFHs, more incline to take public transportation, more things to do, pub/bars/live music than SFH with backyards that caters more to families with kids. Urban sprawl happened for many decades because of cheap and abunda…

> There's a growing demand for mid-density mixed-use land because younger generations cannot afford SFHs, more incline to take public transportation, more things to do, pub/bars/live music than SFH with backyards that caters more to families with kids. These are only unmet demands limited to a few cities that young wealthy educated surburbanites flocked to as a group, thereby making them very expensive. Instead of de…

For reference, Belgium is roughly the size of Maryland, which is the 42nd largest U.S. state (out of 50). The U.S. is big and is mostly empty.

Re: Montreal is what North America could be

#82

Post by preseinger »

zzbzq wrote: post #13
pessimizer wrote: post #4

As a Chicagoan, I don't understand this critique of North America. This seems to be a critique of the suburbs. > They are dominated by detached homes, often set back from the road by lawns. Multi-family housing is generally confined to the downtown, and mainly comes in the form of high-rise towers. This certainly doesn't describe Chicago at all, or even nearby suburbs. It seems like a third of the makeup of Chicago n…

City planning hipster-ism is great clickbait on the internet. Younger people without much experience or brains click on it and get all enthusiastic about the idea of some mythical perfect city. In this case, the "missing middle" is what cheaper living looks like outside of a big city center. In the big cities, high rises are used because the city is literally out of space. Outside of a big city, single family homes a…

> Outside of a big city, single family homes are more popular because people almost unanimously want to live in them.

This desire isn't, like, innate to the human condition, though. It's the outcome of a long history of social, cultural, and economic policy. What people want is generally nurture, not nature.

Re: Montreal is what North America could be

#83

Post by [deleted] »

manux wrote: post #24
johnatwork wrote: post #14

Rent is cheap because people are leaving the xenophobic environment. There's always some referendum talk on a 20 year cycle to keep the rates low, 70s, 90, 10s. So yeah there's a huge Brain Drain from Anglo/English speaking Immigrant populations, as well as people fed up with the corruption.

Wow, what a take. I seriously doubt that people in Montreal/Quebec are more or less xenophobic than the average North American; if you have data supporting this I'd be happy to change my mind. Also please be more skeptical of thoughts of the form "X is Y because of hot take Z". Reality is complex and things have many causes. Montreal has a long history of doing city planning differently than other cities in Canada.

[deleted]

Re: Montreal is what North America could be

#84

Post by sabjut »

mercy_dude wrote: post #58

I don’t understand the attack on detached family home. We have a lot of land. And enough natural resources to fund enough renewable ventures such as EV adoption and renewable energy production. This seems to be a wider effort by a group of loud mouths to discourage families to single family homes while investors gobble up SFHs in North America at record speed. I mean who do you think are going to own the lions share…

Detached housing increases mean distance between households. This increase leads to increased need for longer roads more infrastructure etc. This is the obvious. What is not obvious is the social impact of this.

As a kid I was able to walk and bike into school. The independence was great and I had lots of adventures on the way home with my friends on the way back from school. Only when we moved to a single family home further away from school I had to rely on the bus that only came once an hour and even more infrequent when its later in the afternoon, I saw my friends less.

This just a stupid anecdote of mine but I do see the pattern: people that live further away, see each other less and do less together. I can walk 5 min to the subway station and be at the front door of any circa 1.5m people in my city within 30 minutes. Not possible with detached housing. Subways only make sense in somewhat denser environments.

This all before talking about energy efficiency. Since I have other tenants left and right of me, I basically don't didn't even need to turn the heating on that much last winter.

Also I can walk to the corner of the city block and get fresh and warm bread from my favorite bakery. It's also right opposite of a very good pizza place. Not possible in suburbia.

If I wanna see some green and meet friends to play volleyball or a picnic I go to the public park instead of my private garden. The park is maintained by professional landscapers and gardeners, I wouldn't even have the time to care about my own garden.

I would suffer horribly in detached home suburbia and also have a far larger environmental footprint, so why do it?

Re: Montreal is what North America could be

#86

Post by abawany »

johnatwork wrote: post #14

Rent is cheap because people are leaving the xenophobic environment. There's always some referendum talk on a 20 year cycle to keep the rates low, 70s, 90, 10s. So yeah there's a huge Brain Drain from Anglo/English speaking Immigrant populations, as well as people fed up with the corruption.

Of all the places I've lived in and visited, Montreal was the only place so far where random people on the street had a problem with me, based on the way I look - got this way around the time the current government was elected. However, one thing to remember with rents is that the city mandates the percent of allowed rent increases plus it's nearly impossible to evict someone, which I suspect has a non trivial effect on rents.

Re: Montreal is what North America could be

#87

Post by seszett »

glouwbug wrote: post #76
Scoundreller wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a strong conviction that the reason Montreal housing is cheaper is in no small part because of the language barrier. You can totally get by in Montreal speaking English only. Here’s the CEO of Air Canada, Michael Rousseau, on how he’s managed to thrive in Montreal without knowing French working for a legislatively bilingual organization: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/air-canada-ceo-1.6393063 > Even if you…

Remember, kids, it's only racist if you're the majority /s

Most countries have language skills requirements for immigrants though, and language isn't an intrinsic part of a person but can be learned, so language skills requirements certainly aren't racist.

Re: Montreal is what North America could be

#88

Post by pbourke »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #52
zzbzq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

City planning hipster-ism is great clickbait on the internet. Younger people without much experience or brains click on it and get all enthusiastic about the idea of some mythical perfect city. In this case, the "missing middle" is what cheaper living looks like outside of a big city center. In the big cities, high rises are used because the city is literally out of space. Outside of a big city, single family homes a…

Perhaps we can engage with the material without insulting the people behind it. It’s not exactly a compelling argument. I find it a little odd that the assumption is that single family homes are somehow always superior. That is not the case in a lot of the world. It’s not true in New York. It’s certainly not true in most cities outside the US and Canada. Perhaps instead of assuming everybody fits into this world view…

> I find it a little odd that the assumption is that single family homes are somehow always superior.

“Superior” is a value judgement. I think “preferred” is closer to the mark. People like single-family homes and they go to great lengths to buy them and deal with the externalities of living in them (commuting, maintenance). As the externalities lessened (broader acceptance of working remotely), SFH became more valuable in the last two years.

> It’s not true in New York.

There are great swathes of lower-density housing in New York and its surrounding region. NYC is an outlier on account of its geography and place in the economy.

> Perhaps we can engage with the material without insulting the people behind it. It’s not exactly a compelling argument.

I think it was an appropriate way to engage with an article that takes “people would rather live in mixed-density neighborhoods than single family homes” as its premise. The revealed preference of the entire post-WW2 era in North America is mostly the opposite of this assertion. In general, as society has gotten richer more people have looked to own single family homes.

Re: Montreal is what North America could be

#89

Post by Apocryphon »

pbourke wrote: post #88
hardwaregeek wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we can engage with the material without insulting the people behind it. It’s not exactly a compelling argument. I find it a little odd that the assumption is that single family homes are somehow always superior. That is not the case in a lot of the world. It’s not true in New York. It’s certainly not true in most cities outside the US and Canada. Perhaps instead of assuming everybody fits into this world view…

> I find it a little odd that the assumption is that single family homes are somehow always superior. “Superior” is a value judgement. I think “preferred” is closer to the mark. People like single-family homes and they go to great lengths to buy them and deal with the externalities of living in them (commuting, maintenance). As the externalities lessened (broader acceptance of working remotely), SFH became more valua…

> The revealed preference of the entire post-WW2 era in North America is mostly the opposite of this assertion.

But with the rise of climate change, ever-growing traffic and commute, urban sprawl, and expensive housing, things are starting to shift in the other way. This narrative does not exist in the vacuum, it's been over a decade of Strong Towns, walkability, more bike lanes, millennials not owning cars, and other assorted trends pushing against the postwar status.

> as society has gotten richer more people have looked to own single family homes.

And society's purchasing power has not exactly risen in line with housing costs, especially since 2008.

Re: Montreal is what North America could be

#90

Post by betaby »

Apocryphon wrote: post #80
betaby wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Montreal has probably the best public transit in north America. Can't think of anything else really.

Relatively cheap rents for a city of that size.

Matches the income of the population I would say.
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