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Urbanites want an urban, Sainte-Catherine style, shopping experience, complete with walk along to consecutive and contiguous storefronts lining the street. Suburbanites want the freedom and accessibility of just driving to the mall with their car, parking and going in and finding everything in one place. Why don't we see shopping centres that truly combine both? Obviously, there are malls that kind of do, but i've yet to encounter a mall that fully implements both sides of the coin. So introducing.. my vision for a mall: -Not a single exterior surface parking spot. -The mall is meant to be located in a dense part of a grid patterned city. -There are wide sidewalks going all around, with stores lining the streets. -For those who want to park, there are roads leading through the mall, directly into a massive indoor parking garage, which is surrounded by the mall itself. Ta-da! Everybody's happy!

I haven't found any news about it yet but there is a weird smell all around Downtown (well at least Place des Arts, lower Main and Concordia). The smell resembles that of dead animals (trust me, I know), but no dead animal could smell that far, so it's probably industrial. Any guesses? Same thing appears to have happened in Toronto a couple of weeks ago: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1368017 A similar (yet less disgusting) mystery was solved in New York in 2009 by mapping 311 calls: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/nyregion/06smell.html Montreal is a much less dense city though and most people here don't call 311 for these things.

Alors comme le titre l'annonce voici quelque photos de Montreal vue de la belle tour de la Bourse! Elles sont toutes prises par moi toutes fraiches de ce dimanche et c'est la premiere fois que je prend des photos alors soyer pas trop rude svp. J'espere que ça apporte un point de vue différent du skyline En route vers le Downtown [/img] L'auto était plus que due:p [/img] [/img] [/img] [/img] Alot more to come!

Infographic: Every Person In The U.S. And Canada, On One Crazy, Zoomable Map FORGET LAKES, RIVERS, STATES, AND CAPITALS--THIS MAP JUST SHOWS PEOPLE. ALL OF 'EM. Most maps are curious combinations of the natural and the man-made, charts that show us the rivers, lakes, and mountains that have developed across millenia as well as the lines we humans have established, in much more recent history, to divide them all up. But this map by Brandon Martin-Anderson, a graduate student at MIT’s Changing Places lab, shows one thing and one thing only: people, as counted in the most recent U.S. and Canadian censuses. Martin-Anderson’s map (which is really worth a look in its full, zoomable glory) is dizzyingly dense, with some three hundred million data points, but it’s also exceedingly straightforward. One dot per person--nothing else. The designer says he got the idea when he was looking at a series of race and ethnicity dot density maps created by designer Eric Fischer. Curious about what his own neighborhood would look like in greater detail, he started plotting census data. "I started with the University District neighborhood in Seattle," he says, "but then I was curious about Seattle. Then I was curious about western Washington, then Washington, then the whole West Coast, then the U.S." At first glance, the picture it shows is understandable enough. Major cities are dense pockets of black, with more uninhabited white space cropping up as you move from east to west. But it’s remarkable just how pronounced that drop-off is moving from states like Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri to the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas, and the states beyond. As Martin-Anderson points out, that abrupt drop-off lines up neatly with the average precipitation experienced by those areas. "I love this a lot," he says, "because it illustrates the extent to which humans in large numbers act like something so simple and biological--like a field of grass growing under the reach of a sprinkler." Other observations from the mapmaker? For one thing, the map shows just how sparse northern Canada really is; 64% of the country’s population actually resides south of Seattle. It also illustrates some unique regional trends. The band of black along the Eastern Seaboard isn’t much of a surprise, but the metropolitan axis running from Atlanta to Raleigh-Durham is surprisingly dense. For Martin-Anderson, the process of making the map was also enlightening. Sifting through the census data, he found that the highest density blocks were prisons, dorms, barracks, homeless shelters, and luxury apartments. "It’s an extremely heterogeneous collection of outliers," he says. "People are prone to making politically charged statements about the goodness or badness of population density, but it’s very difficult to make any true and wide-reaching statements about areas with extremely high population density." But the project raises other questions still, mainly about the types of maps we make and use as a society. If the concept behind the dot-a-person map is so straightforward, and the results so insightful, why don’t we see them more often? The answer, says Martin-Anderson, can be traced to the fact that we’ve only recently become familiar with an easy-to-use tool for making sense of insanely dense, multi-scale maps: pinch-to-zoom. "I think designers are scared of overwhelming their users," he says, explaining the dearth of similar efforts until now. "Glancing around my computer’s screen right now I see maybe 3,000 characters of text or clickable regions--3,000 elements. The population map throws about 340 million objects at you at once, and I think most people’s intuition is that that’s just far too many things to display at once." But as we’ve all become masters of our maps apps, designers may need to change that assumption. "It’s super amazing how comfortable the average person is with zooming in and out of an image illustrating data with scale-free structure," the designer says. "I think it’s due to the tremendous amount of work that Apple and Google have done acclimating people to zooming. The majority of traffic to the map so far has been on devices where people are navigating through pinch-zoom. Point being: In the past, unfamiliarity and difficulty in zooming made scale-free graphics difficult, so designers either simplified them or ignored them. Now that people are used to zooming, we don’t have to make decisions for our users about where they should spend their attention. We can just give them everything at once." To test that theory for yourself, grab your iPad and check out the zoomable version of the map on Martin-Anderson’s site. http://bmander.com/dotmap/index.html Via : fastcodesign.com

Sur le boulevard Sainte-Foy, à Longueuil, il semble y avoir un projet de 4-5 étages en construction, à la hauteur de la rue Dollard. Est-ce que quelqu'un sait plus à propos de ce projet? Je vais prendre des photos demain pour vous donner un apperçu. J'aime le boul. Sainte-Foy. C'est une rue qui a un style plus urbain et dense. C'est une rue qui se densifie assez intensément depuis 2005. Vite de même, je compte 3 terrains vacants qui ont disparus depuis 2005, 4 nouvelles constructions de 4 étages (condos), un projet commercial de 3 étages, et plusieurs projets de condos de 3 étages. 8 Janvier 2009

Jouons à un jeu... essayez d'imaginer qu'est ce qui arriverait si l'île de Montréal n'avait qu'un seul pont (oui c'est absurde, mais ça devrait faire des scénarios assez intéressants). Est-ce que Montréal serait beaucoup plus dense? Plus pauvre? Plus riche? Est-ce que la rive-sud (en supposant que le pont y soit rattaché), prendrait la relève et deviendrait le pôle? 3,2,1, go.

Du développement commercial et industriel, le parfait complément à la densification démographique de l'île de Montréal. Je proposerais incidemment un nouveau slogan: des emplois là où habitent les gens, en sonnant le glas à l'expansion des villes-dortoirs. Dans le but de faire échec à l'étalement urbain, un programme incitatif devrait encourager prioritairement la création d'emplois et de logements sur l'île, avec effet décroissant selon l'éloignement vers les couronnes. J'irais même jusqu'à charger une taxe spéciale sur toute nouvelle construction en dehors des zones déjà urbanisées ou dans de nouveaux lotissements, sur tout le territoire de la banlieue. Je ferais cependant exception de Laval qui est déjà en phase de densification. Une ville plus dense diminue les besoins en déplacements automobiles et rentabilise davantage le développement des transport en commun, avec effet durable sur le plan environnemental. Il faut changer les mentalités et briser la dichotomie de la banlieue qui veut que ce soit l'endroit idéal pour élever une famille. Il reste d'ailleurs suffisamment d'espace disponible sur les deux îles (Laval et Montréal) pour facilement doubler la population, tout en renforçant les pôles économiques centraux. On économiserait au passage les meilleures terres cultivables qui restent encore dans le voisinage de la ville, tout en préservant une précieuse ceinture verte, indispensable à l'équilibre écologique et sociologique du grand Montréal. Si on veut véritablement améliorer notre bilan carbone et réduire la pression des villes sur l'environnement, nous n'avons pas le choix que de penser globalement. Ce n'est qu'avec des efforts concertés et simultanés dans tous les domaines d'activités humaines que nous y arriverons. Pour cela il est nécessaire que la volonté vienne du gouvernement provincial lui-même, car c'est le seul qui a les moyens législatifs pour véritablement changer les choses. On n'a plus le choix si on veut léguer aux générations futures, un monde meilleur et en plus grande harmonie avec la nature. L'occupation du territoire est déjà une agression en soi, mais on peut diminuer notre empreinte par toutes sortes de mesures de naturalisation qui réconcilieraient la ville avec le milieu naturel. Une prise de conscience est déjà en voie de se faire, mais il y a encore beaucoup de résistance et d'opposition. Et tant que le message ne viendra pas de la plus haute instance, avec des moyens concrets pour y arriver, on sera limité à des interventions ponctuelles et trop localisées pour faire une différence appréciable. Comme le discours économique est à la mode aujourd'hui, on peut ajouter à cette vision écologique, l'effet positif sur le développement de Montréal en premier lieu, et aussi bien sûr les villes déjà établies, mais dans une moindre mesure. Un Montréal plus populeux et plus dense est un gage d'enrichissement collectif, avec des revenus plus importants et de plus grands moyens pour assurer son développement futur. J'en conclue que la prospérité soutenue de la ville passe nécessairement par l'arrêt de l'étalement urbain, et la fin de la dispersion de nos forces et de nos énergies, dans un territoire devenu démesuré par rapport à sa densité.

en cherchant un peu partout sur internet je suis tombe sur cet article (de blog) que j'ai trouve interessant, qui fait par de la situation de Atlanta, qu'elle decrit comme un 'dense sprawl': Tuesday, August 4, 2009 “Spatial Mismatch” and Why Density Alone Isn’t Enough by Sarah Goodyear on August 4, 2009 Density, density, density. It's something of a mantra in sustainable transportation circles. But in today's featured post from the Streetsblog Network, UrbanCincy points to the cautionary example of Atlanta -- a place that could perhaps best be described as dense sprawl. The skylines of Atlanta. What has happened in Atlanta is something that should be learned from. Atlanta is arguably the king of sprawl in modern day America, but some might say, well Fulton County has a higher population density than does Hamilton County. Similar arguments can be applied to other less urban regions than Cincinnati. The fact is that Fulton County is just about built out with the exception of some land in the far southern reaches of the county. Furthermore, this built-out county has extraordinarily dense suburban areas including the central Perimeter area which includes 30-story office towers, residential towers and 12-lane highway systems to boot. The traffic is abysmal like much of the rest of Atlanta and the problem is only going to get worse. The reason is a combination of densities and form. The suburban areas of Atlanta, and even much of the urban areas, are almost entirely car-dependent. So a low-density suburban area that is car-dependent is one thing, but a high-density area of the same makeup is nightmarish. The "spatial mismatch" is exacerbated to a degree seen nowhere else in America than Atlanta and Los Angeles (Los Angeles County is the most populated county in the country at 9+ million). The people living in one area are working in another creating a spatial mismatch that is exacerbated by the high densities. They are not walking, biking or taking transit to a level enough that would offset its densities. When you hear of the next "new urbanist" neighborhood on the fringes of a metropolitan area, or the next lifestyle center that pitches itself as being the next best thing to an authentic urban shopping experience, be wary. These are not real communities where store owners live in addition to running their business. The residents are most likely hopping in their car that is parked nicely within one of their two (or more) dedicated parking spaces and driving into the center city for work. Higher densities in our suburban areas are not the answers to our sprawl issues. A correction of the spatial mismatch is what's needed to truly create a sustainable metropolitan area. Natural systems need to be preserved in their truest form and our most fertile food-producing regions need to be maintained for their highest and best use. Higher densities in the core with high-density satellite neighborhoods connected by high-quality transit options are the best possible solutions. Other news from around the network: Kansas Cyclist reports on efforts in Iowa and Colorado to ban bikes -- that's right, ban bikes -- from some roads. Meanwhile, CommuteOrlandoBlog is back from a bike trip through Amish country and has a very thought-provoking post on the culture of speed vs. the culture of trust. And Trains for America links to a debate over the relative merits of high-speed and maglev trains. je me demandes si montreal n'est pas un peu en train de vivre ce genre de transformation lente, avec nos dix-30, nos developements en peripheries (pensez a toutes ces tours a l'entour des galleries d'anjou, par example), et la volonte que certain semblent vouloir exprimer de garder le centre-ville bas et de l'etendre au besoin (griffintown, radio-can, toute a l'ouest de Guy). ca ne fait que renforcer mon argument que le developement devrait etre encourage a etre non seulement dense mais central, et que toutes ces petites tours de 65 metres sont du gaspillage d'espace et une potentielle source de problemes de transport comme on le vois a Atlanta ou Los Angeles. (ps, j'suis passe par atl en janvier pis c'est clairement une ville de char, a peu pres 12 voies d'autoroute qui en devient 24 via diverses routes de contournements ici et la ... c'est intense!)