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Took the 55 bus north on St-Laurent yesterday. I was shocked to see dozens of boarded up store fronts on the east side of the street between Sherbrooke and Mont-Royal. This is so much worse that I have ever seen in over 20 years! So sad and depressing. How could we let this happen? Go see for yourself. Take a walk on the Main. If anyone wants to record and share the images here, I'm sure you will be shocked too. Here's something I just saw in CULT-MTL on same subject, although IMO the situation is much more serious than the tone in the piece. http://cultmontreal.com/2013/04/st-laurent-montreal-main/ St-Laurent has seen better days There are few greater, simpler pleasures in this town than walking along the Main on a crisp spring afternoon. But given how dire things are looking for Montreal’s multicultural microcosm, I’m not looking forward to doing it this year with my usual enthusiasm. For years, pedestrians had to deal with all the interminable construction, and while many of us courageously traversed those rickety planks masquerading as sidewalks, the street never really recovered from those trying times. Businesses have been shuttering left and right (I weep for BBQ Rocky’s — where I’ll get smokes and watch soaps now I don’t know), so in an effort to make the abyss more enticing to prospective entrepreneurs, the St-Laurent Merchants’ Association is spending $30,000 to dress up the growing number of empty storefronts. Of course, it’s akin to trying to stop the bleeding from a gunshot wound with a few dabs of a wet nap, or more specifically it’s a modern take on Potemkin Village. The obvious, sad truth is that, given how gradual the Main’s depreciation has been, it’s going to take more than a few fancy snapshots to revitalize the area. It’s not a bad idea, per se, because mushy newspapers certainly don’t make for good window shopping, but saving the Main will require progressive thinking. There are plenty of cooler streets around town these days, and history isn’t much of a selling point, even when it’s engraved on ergonomically unfavourable benches. Some streets just never get their groove back: St-Laurent merchants need only look to their cross-street brother Prince Arthur if they want a harrowing look into their future. There’s a municipal election coming up later this year, so perhaps it’s high time that the supposedly “clean” party — the one that rules over the Plateau with a sanctimonious wag and aspires to expand their empire — prove they’re good at something besides pointing out how bloated and corrupt their political rivals are. And if they don’t have any solutions, either, maybe they can just hike parking rates by another buck or two. That’ll help. ■

So I cannot sleep as I keep thinking the rest of Canada keeps hating on Montréal and our developments, economy, government and so on. A, I don't buy the bs that we're lagging behind (We could be growing much much faster I realize) but more importantly the hate on our new architecture m'enerve en poutine. Not my point however, I was thinking it would be fantastic to develop both the northern and souther corners of René-Lévesque and Guy. Not in a standard way of developer says this, city says that, study shows this, ok simple tower that sells and doesn't cause much fuss. But in a very Montréal way rather, through a system of all Montréal companies who care about here(Wsp accross the street for example), ideas from all groups of people like students from our excellent engineering universities like ÉTS/Polytechnic/McGill/Concordia all in the visinity, people on this forum with fun ideas that we can all talk about and turn into something Montréal in general can ve proud of. It be an awesome place to have the highest outlook as well, all along the boulevard, the new Champlain, the general, both new mega hospitals, the other new developments popping up all around the area. I'm gonna spend some free time trying to come up with some designs and 3d models and I hope someone else on this vibrant forum will do so with me. To all my francophone friends , I wrote this in english because I'm better in english, and I know you understand just as I understand when you write you're long French posts.....another great Montréal thing where we don't care what language just as long as it's a good idea [emoji14] Sent from my C6806 using Tapatalk

(Courtesy of The Montreal Gazette)

Obama : "The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over" President Obama was back on the road today to garner support for the economic stimulus package that passed the Senate early Tuesday morning. He was speaking today at a town hall forum in Ft. Myers, Florida, and near the end of his hour-long session, a city councilwoman asked him about transportation and infrastructure in the stimulus. Here’s how he responded: It’s imagining new transportation systems. I’d like to see high speed rail where it can be constructed. I would like for us to invest in mass transit because potentially that’s energy efficient. And I think people are a lot more open now to thinking regionally… The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody… recognizes that’s not a smart way to design communities. So we should be using this money to help spur this sort of innovative thinking when it comes to transportation. That will make a big difference. Watch the full session from C-SPAN here. The section begins at around the 55 minute mark. If we can track it down, check back with us later for a more detailed transcript. One way to ensure that we’re not throwing stimulus money into something whose “days are over” would be to ensure that highway funding in the stimulus goes first to reduce the massive backlog of desperately needed maintenance and repair before building new roads and highways. Which would steer funding into projects that can be bid quickly, will create more jobs than new construction, and won’t come with the hidden cost of future maintenance like new construction does. Another smart use of stimulus money would be making sure that the bill maintains the House’s funding level of $12 billion for public transportation. Look back here in the next day or two for more detailed information on weighing in and taking action while the bill is in conference committee. We’ll have a full breakdown of the differences between the two bills and which areas in each version should be supported. Click through to see the full transcript, albeit with possible inaccuracies until we get an official one. Thanks to Jay Blazek Crossley of Houston Tomorrow for sending it over. Speaker: I am now an elected official myself. I serve on the City Council in ? Springs, Florida. My mayor is here as well. Cities throughout Florida are having a difficult time because of the mortgage crisis. Growth has slowed. We fund our transportation infrastructure needs through impact fees. Now that we’re not getting that, we’re falling behind in our ability to keep up with road work, municipal water projects, being able to bring solar panels down here to an inland port. We need commuter rail. We need lots of things for infrastructure in this state. If we ran out of oil today, we would not be able to move in this state, to get around. And I hope that you turn that thing around in the Gulf, we don’t want to drill for oil in the Gulf. We’ve got a beautiful pristine state, so I am asking you, how will we get our state going again in transportation? I’m very worried about our dependence on foreign oil and I don’t want to drill in our Gulf. I want some commuter rail and I want to improve our transportation. President Obama: Well, We have targeted billions of dollars at infrastructure spending and states all across the country are going through what Florida’s going through. there was a study done by the American Association of Engineers - that might not be the exact title, engineers from all across the country. We get a D for infrastructure all across the country. We saw what happened in Minneapolis where a bridge collapsed and resulted in tragedy. Not only do we need to rebuild our roads, our bridges, our ports, our levies, our damns, but we also have to plan for the future. This is the same example of turning crisis into opportunity. This should be a wake up call for us. You go to Shanghai, China right now and they’ve got high speed rail that puts our rail to shame. They’ve got ports that are state of the art. Their airports are you know compared to the airports that we - you go through beijing airport and you compare that to miami airport? Now, look, this is America. We always had the best infrastructure. We were always willing to invest in the future. Governor Crist mentioned Abraham Lincoln. In the middle of the Civil War, in the midst of all this danger and peril, what did he do? He helped move the intercontinental railroad. He helped start land grant colleges. He understood that even when you’re in the middle of crisis, you’ve got to keep your eye on the future. So transportation is not just fixing our old transportation systems but its also imaging new transportation systems. That’s why I’d like to see high speed rail where it can be constructed. That’s why I would like to invest in mass transit because potentially that’s energy efficient and I think people are alot more open now to thinking regionally in terms of how we plan our transportation infrastructure. The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody recognizes that that’s not a smart way to build communities. So we should be using this money to help spur this kind of innovative thinking when it comes to transportation. That will make a big difference. http://t4america.org/blog/archives/661