Downtown Montreal, Quebec

While Downtown encompasses the Quartier des Spectacles I didn’t include it in my Downtown review and kept it as  its own distinctive neighborhood. For the Downtown review I’m including everything south of City Councilors St. to Guy Street along with the Golden Square Mile neighborhood, considered by most standards to be part of Dwtn but also a bit autonomous . This stretches west to Mount Royal Park. The main spine of Downtown runs down Sherbrooke St. This formed the historic heart of Golden Square Mile where Montreal’s turn of the 19th century millionaires settled. Eventually all of the mansions on the northern stretch of Sherbrooke were replaced with post WWII skyscrapers creating a pretty bland and soulless American urban environment. But many mansions and historic structures were preserved in the southern half of Sherbrooke between Stanley and Guy street.

Saint-Catherine St is the great historic shopping district of Dwtn Montreal akin to Chicago’s Miracle Mile. It remains at a very human scaled with mostly historic commercial buildings remaining. Recent improvements have improved the urban form expanding the sidewalks and make the street even more human scaled. In the southern half of Dwtn Bishop, Rue de la Montagne, and especially Crescent, are three narrow east to west streets that preserve some of Montreal’s best late 19th century grand townhouse architecture. The northern half of Dwtn is mostly post WWII high-rises with the main exception of many historic buildings surrounding Phillips Square. West of Sherbrooke is a mostly residential neighborhood mixing historic and modern residences and institutional uses from McGill University.

Parts of Downtown are not the most exciting because of a large amount of bland high-rises, plenty of wide blocks, and a lack of premier park spaces. But because of its density, good urban planning, smart urban design decisions, good pedestrian activity and great remaining shopping  Downtown Montreal has been able to largely overcome these downsides. When adding the exciting Quartier des Spectacles I would still likely include Downtown Montreal as a top 10 Dwtn in North America. The height restriction creates an interesting uniformity to the highest skyscrapers in Montreal as none can exceed the height of Mount Royal (232 Meters). Overall I like this especially when viewed Dwtn from Mount Royal or from afar but it does create some blandness on the ground. Fortunately the new skyscrapers being  built are a lot more unique and creative.

Click here to view my Montreal Album on Flickr

URBAN STRENGTHS:

 * Some major Dwtn landmarks include Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Sun Life Bldg.,
* Several attractive parks and plazas including Phillips Square, Dorchester Square,  and Place du Canada. But not including Mount Royal.
* Excellent public transit access including 6 subway stops. Same with the dedicated bike lane network Dwtn where most are separated by barriers. Feeds into an incredible bike network across the City and Metro. The dedicated bike station system is also one of the best (if not best) in North America.
* Decent bike canopy.
* Generally solid pedestrian activity especially along Saint-Catherine (Canada’s business commercial avenue) and the more historic and mixed-use sections of Dwtn.
* Solid cultural amenities of a Dwtn but with several movie theaters including several indie theaters and a cineplex
* Very good retail amenities Dwtn including a couple supermarkets and lots of ethnic groceries, plenty of drug stores, a great array of clothing stores concentrated along St. Catherine St., several shopping malls including the extensive Eaton Mall and the underground City (the largest underground shopping mall in the world. This comes with many department stores. Other retail amenities are pretty standard for a Dwtn.
* Good pedestrian activity in much of Dwtn but still plenty of dead spaces.
* Lots of residential options Dwtn, generally expensive but not terrible. Solid density with about 20K per square mile living in the greater Dwtn area.
* Lots of universities studies thanks to McGill, the University of Quebec in Montreal and many other smaller colleges.

URBAN WEAKNESSES:

* Limited modern ADA curbs.
* Plenty of modern single use skyscrapers from the 1960s-2000 in the northern and eastern edges of Dwtn which creates some dead spaces.
* No extraordinary parks spaces in Dwtn Montreal as found in other great North American cities like Chicago, NYC, or  Boston.
* Several wide autocentric streets run through dwtn still. Thankfully the highway in the Center City Montreal is underground in Dwtn.