Ashok

I wonder at which point the lack of land on the Island + the need for more housing, and therefore cost of land price will justify covering up the Decarie expressway. Here was a golden opportunity to have a park of some sort like we see near Villa Maria Station; or even add housings. It would be like a Private-public partnership type contract - here, you built houses and other amentities for residence and in return, you make the expressway better integrated into the city.

Our very own Valley of Ashes .

This photo deserves another look, hence the quote! But wow! Its like crane-city! I never seen Montreal have so much cranes in my life.

Regarding the China skyscraper ban, here are additional considerations - note, I am not an expert on the topic, but here is what I am extrapolating based on the info provided in this video + my understanding of the PRC. (1) China is pushing hard to decarbonize its economy. 40% of global carbon emission is from the building sector, and Chinese cities - like most cities in the Global South - will experience massive growth as it urbanizes. (2) Net-Zero carbon building: right now, you can start hitting net-zero operational carbon emission around 10 to 15 floors. And China will urbanize more as the wealth creation moves from its coastal cities into inner China. Any sensible policies on climate change will have to decarbonize existing cities and control the carbon emission of newer buildings. (1st reason to ban skyscrapers.) (3) There is also a culture of parking wealth in real estate in China. This is true not just for Chinese culture... But, especially in China, your real estate does play a significant factor in finding a suitable lady. Even low-income families in China are pulling in their resources to invest in real estate. (4) But, this creates a bubble, really S**t quality, etc. No oversight, no rigorous standards or any mechanism to verify these standards are met - and skyscrapers because of their complexity and cost of a disaster is so high, it makes sense to Ban them or at least make it difficult to built them (difficult = require more permits, etc.) [think of the on-going crisis like potentially what ended up happening in 2008 , you can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020–2022_Chinese_property_sector_crisis (so this is the 2nd reason to ban skyscrapers - think of it this way, this is the quickest way to increase the safety of buildings, by eliminating the ones with the most potential for disasters.) (5) What the Video missed. The wealth is unevenly distributed: China Plus, the Chinese economic miracle - so to say - has not been relatively even. Xiaoping's plan intentionally called for special economic zones opening up the coastal cities and thus the boom around coastal towns and that was 30 years ago. The thing is that most Chinese are still relatively poor - what we see, the expensive shiny glittering skyscrapers, etc., is only accessible to a relatively few Chinese... There has been a policy shift in recent years to crack on it. When I say recently, I mean in the past year or so - a final reason why skyscrapers are being banned is about the party's image and what it wants to project... and this probably has a lot to do with Xi Jinping trying to further consolidate power. (the 3rd, but probably the most important reason why skyscrapers are banned - its a sign of capitalism, but more specifically, its a sign of uneven distribution of wealth!!!) IMO, skyscrapers in China are not banned. There will be just a more rigorous standard, and you will need to get special permission from CCP to build them - but, China... it's big! So, we still will see some crazy skyscrapers coming from there.

I believe this school is part of the next generation of schools. Here is a video of the concepts and ideas: https://youtu.be/YfMbqFUFJ18 more info on the projecT: http://www.lapointemagne.ca/projet/lab-ecole-rimouski/

All good points - I was thinking a linear park covering the highway. Your point about St. Catherine is also valid, it will be a challenge logistically - perhaps too much.

Montreal has to propose its own solutions - I propose an elevator indoor park that is covered by classing like a green house - acting as a bio dome dome across the city. Like small strips of park-ways, but connected. A but like the underground city, but overground. It isn't too too difficult to built such a park - you can try to regulate the temperature of the entire structure several ways, PV (Electricity), free thermal heating from the sun directly, and maybe some way to direct the heat from the overheating subways stations. So, am almost certain we can make this to be self-regulating using existing technologies (solar + heat recovery systems) Here are some good pathways for it... most of st. Catherine... And look, Guy Concordia Subway station is just around the corner - You should be able to provide a million homes with free heat from there. In case you are wondering what I am talking about in terms of free heat, am talking about this system: https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/interior-projects/how-to/a149/1275121/

@anjou merci! The future/retro look was intentional, or sort of part of an experiment. Am so happy that you were able to see these photos as such.

^ yea, not surprising these days. So many of the building and real estate in the west is just a place for rich Foreigner to park there money.

Yep, in front of Bryant Park.

The front feature reminds me of the Bank of China building in NYC

That rare moment that there is no line up wrapping around the block.

Did not realize how fast this went up!

I am sure the technology is better these days. But, we did employ this technology when we were surveying the Grey Nun Mother's House for Concordia University - I guess that was almost 10 years ago - right before the renovation. But, omg - it gave us a good idea of the floor plans, but it became a mess when we tried to integrate it into revit. What we found is that the drawing was off by a few mm here, and another mm there - but those little discrepancies added up .. all this to say, we had to go back and manual survey the building again! I would say though, since Covid, we have been using drones for site-visits and those work wonders!

Yup - you are right. Thanks for the feedback.Its easy for me to read French, but excuse me for replying in English (will take me 3 times longer to write in French.) I do not have a lot of experience within the Quebec industry per se. During Grad School, I was creating standards for improved delivery of net-zero homes for remote sub-arctic regions in Canada (specifically, Northern Quebec,) and I did study this standard which is quite progressive - https://transitionenergetique.gouv.qc.ca/en/residential/programs/novoclimat And I am also aware of incentives within Quebec. Generally speaking, what I see in Quebec is more grassroots push for energy efficiency - yes, there are def demonstrative projects pushed by the government. My theory is the cost of energy is so cheap in Quebec, that it often does not make a lot of economic sense to electrify. So, despite grassroots push and structural push for these standards via the government, I believe its failure to scale has to with the economic models of these systems - though, there are additional factors to consider here. Let take NYC, we have pretty strong framework that not only offer incentives for electrification, but there are also stringent carbon tax law (one of the most progressive, and large scale application of carbon tax laws on buildings) - and it is still difficult to convince clients - even when the economic works. Usually, we find clients are a bit scared of using technology that they feel are new to them. Note, technologies like HP, Heat Recovery systems are pretty well understood and there are enough application in life to assess their success. Where we are seeing a huge impact in NYC is the introduction of the carbon tax laws - directly aligned with UN Climate Goals. And the taxes are significant - enough that it is forcing large building owners to retrofit. It is in this context that I feel this news from Quebec is quite Positive! By the way, speaking of Large scale retrofits - here is a presentation I made to NYC architectural communities on emerging technologies that we are trying to push to help scale-up deep-energy retrofit solutions. Notably, the integration of the MEP directly the facade systems. These are new technologies that we understood for years, but we are working with NY State and industry partners to push these ideas onto the market. Mind you - this goes beyond just reducing operational carbon, but also considers the carbon required to retrofit. In the next 30 years - 90% of the building we see around us need to come towards net-zero for us to tackle climate change. 40% of the world carbon emission is through the building sector, in large urban areas - it is perhaps closer to 60 to 70%. So, it is just a matter of years for Montreal to come out and ask buildings to be radically retrofit (And electrification is a key part of that strategy.) We are seeing framework for these regulations - across Canada, but there will soon be a jump where these framework will become regulations and laws (such as banning of the oil.)

Posting this in Urban Tech because it does have a lot to do with innovation. Electrification, especially for a region like Quebec that is heavily reliant on electric infrastructure that is relatively low-carbon makes a lot of sense. You can start replacing fossil fuels with either heat pumps, or centralized systems like Variant Refrigerant flows. I know some people jump when we say Heat Pump and Quebec, but modern heat pumps efficiencies are pretty good even in cold weather. I am not familiar with the landscape in Quebec, but I hope this is followed with some incentives for electrification. Also, they should certainly push for solar and storage, it will improve the resilience of the electric grid - especially during peak loads, or massive failure like the ice storm - solar + storage will make a huge difference. I get that innovation in Quebec regarding more low-carbon homes and building is slow partially because of how cheap energy is in the province, but there is a major opportunity to become a sustainability power-house for Quebec (Which it is already doing by providing clean energy to NY State and other parts of US.) Great move by Quebec, and hopefully other provinces will follow! Let's start de carbonizing our cities. 😃 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-bans-oil-heating-1.6252420

They should really find a way to break the 200 m zone here. Here me out - would ya? With all this construction and transformation of Montreal - I think for that site, something more iconic and defining would be appropriate. The the with Montreal's skyline is that its a city of scales. 1001, PVM - those belong to a particular scale... But then you have other buildings, like on Maisonneuve and McGill Avenue that is another scale... Rocabella towers, etc - those are yet, again another scale.. What makes Montreal unique is that it has the juxtaposition of multiple scales across its cityscape. Unlike other large cities, Montreal has a lot more scales. Its rooted in its history, and its decline - but, yet, Montreal also has been extraordinarily resilient as a city. Unlike Detroit, or others that saw similar decline, Montreal has kept up ... And as the city once again transform ... and what better way to redefine the city then by adding something that is of an entirely different scale! Hence why I think this particular site, it would be great to allow something much taller - like 250m!

Does anyone have a check up model of downtown Montreal? I would like to take a stab at the skyline.

OMG! I haven't quite had such an emotional roller coaster ride in ages!!!

Yeah - it was not called 737 for sure. There is a lot of fascinating stuff I remember about Montreal but without source. ugh. For PVM, I remember reading the developers autobiography in University, and that is where I remember it. Also, Complex DesJardin is a land gifted to the City of Montreal but with a condition, that a street be made between Place Des Arts and Notre Dame. The city took the land, but did nothing about the condition. Until Complex DesJardin was built - which did integrate this street. And the buildings that are built on these axis do have perculiar ways of creating this "street." Here is the axis - if you trace the buildings on it, you should see how it all opens up. Even though the population shift between Montreal to Toronto started in before the 60s - Montreal was still seen as a future global metropolis. And the city was expected to expand rapidly - to about 7 million + by 2000 and continue to be Canada's main metropolis. So, there were certainly a lot of ambitious projects in Montreal and perhaps the biggest one is our metro system, one built not for our current population but one built to accommodate 7+ million people. Say what you want about STM, but if you been to other cities, Montreal perhaps has one of the best subways in the world.

My bad, I meant to say this is the history that happened during its construction. 737 used to be in the 60s a club for the very wealthy. This club was actually existing on the development land of PVM, it was purchased with the argument that there will be a new club on the top floor overlooking the city, and they requested that there would be elevators that go directly to that club because they did not want the patrons to meet.. commoners. I do not have the link to the history. But, it does explains well why there are private elevators going to 737. Yes, the 737 these days is much more accessible. Beautiful views, meh food/drinks though. But the view is worth it.

You know, PVM has a private elevator for the very rich to go to their clubs on the top floor - I mean, god forbid if they saw poor people on their way to their clubs. I think there is a restaurant now there. There are so many visible markers in Montreal that divides the rich poor - interesting because Montreal actively pushes to be more egalitarian. PVM is a great example of it.

Quite interesting that the height limit is 120 m - did I read that correctly? Perhaps a great affordable housing policy is to re-zone the area to allow for much greater height for integrating affordable housing. For example, a developer can built up to 120 m without any addition of affordable housing, but can built 20% higher, if say they include 15% affordable housing. I am unaware of the zoning policies related to encouraging affordable housing in Montreal. But this is critical - as real estate markets around Canada becomes hyper-saturated, investment is pouring into Montreal and we have a clear opportunity to learn from the mistakes of other Canadian cities and better integrate affordable housing policies to ensure a equitable future for all. Additionally, the Bonaventure expressway, along with the rail not only take up prime real estate space in downtown, but acts as an axis that divides the city - in short, an urban planning S**t-show. Why not let developers built over the expressway? As the downtown core moves southwards, and Griffin Town nearly fully developed, it makes sense to ease the transition between the old cores of the city with the newer ones.