We started this YouTube channel two-and-a-half years ago to share our excitement with our
new home of Montreal.
Canada’s second city had always fascinated us, from the architecture to the language
and history, and after visiting many times we finally took the plunge and actually moved
there.
We found that living in Montreal was in fact just as enjoyable as visiting, even during
a pandemic.
We loved the bike infrastructure, which was good enough that Montreal is where we really
became comfortable with urban cycling.
We loved the city’s traditional “plex” housing, which mixes French, British, and
American architectural influences and provides an impressive amount of density for the modest
height.
While more intangible, we also loved the city’s laid-back culture and focus on enjoying life
— more “work-to-live” than “live-to-work”.
Unfortunately…
life doesn’t always work out like you plan.
After a year and a half in Montreal we ended up moving to Ottawa for a job opportunity.
There’s a lot to like about Ottawa, from the multi-use pathways and yes, even the O-Train
when it works, but we never felt as excited about the city as we did Montreal.
We moved there for practical reasons rather than because the city itself drew us in.
We ended up visiting Montreal often — five times last year alone — and each time we
came back wishing we still lived there.
We’re pretty good at appreciating the strengths of different cities but when it comes to our
personal living choices, Montreal just clicks for us in a way that other cities don’t.
That’s why, after a year-and-a-half away, we’ve moved back to Montreal.
So, what’s so great about Montreal?
If we had to condense our thoughts into one concept, it’s that Montreal really nails
the balance between public and private space.
From the Plateau to Pointe-St-Charles, Villeray to Verdun, Hochelaga to St-Henri, Montreal’s
pedestrian-oriented neighbourhoods provide the kind of compelling urban environment that’s
just inherently fun to be in and explore.
People aren’t wrong to call it “European” but many of the same features are found in
older U.S. cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco.
We’re talking about smaller streets with more foot traffic than car traffic, which
makes them feel lively and calm at the same time.
We’re talking about stores and homes that actually frame the streetscape instead of
being set back and hidden away behind lawns or parking lots.
We’re talking about the visual interest created for pedestrians when you have lots
of buildings close to each other that open onto the street with doors, staircases, balconies,
and windows.
We’re talking about having enough variation in building style, height, and color that
everything is interesting but nothing uniquely stands out.
Altogether, this human-scaled environment produced one of the most memorable aspects
of living in Montreal: the neighbourhoods feel like they encourage movement and exploration.
After moving here the first time, walking and biking around Montreal became one of our
main hobbies.
Ottawa is a top-notch city for nature trails, with the best multi-use pathway network of
any Canadian city we know, but Ottawa never inspired us to urban exploration in the same
way.
We enjoyed eccentric Hintonburg and the embassies of Sandy Hill but walking around Ottawa never
felt quite as interesting or compelling.
This was especially noticeable in winter when it’s just too easy to stay inside.
Montreal’s urban environment coaxes you out and encourages you to do things.
The other side of the livability equation is private space.
Montreal’s traditional “plex” housing — duplexes, triplexes, and other small-scale
stacked apartments — tends to provide apartments that are bigger than what you’d find in
other cities, while offering key livability features like personal entrances for most
apartments (thanks to those external staircases) as well as abundant balconies and in-suite
laundry.
And while Montreal isn’t the cheap apartment paradise that it was in the 80s and 90s with
the uncertainty of the Quebec independence referendums, housing in Montreal is still
relatively affordable for a major North American metropolis.
Reasonably-sized apartments are more accessible to the average person in Montreal than in
most other similarly-sized cities.
This is an underappreciated side of urbanism, and it’s why we talk about housing affordability
so much.
It almost doesn’t matter how nice your urban environment is if regular people can’t afford
to live there.
You just have a playground for rich people, tourists, and older people lucky enough to
have bought a home decades ago when it was cheap.
We loved our trip to San Francisco — it’s a wonderful city in a lot of ways, but there’s
something deeply disturbing about seeing average rents literally three times higher than Ottawa
or Montreal.
How do people manage that?
How is that not universally seen as a complete policy disaster, a literal emergency?
Sure, tech workers and some other professionals can manage OK.
But what about everyone else?
Our theory for what makes a livable city basically comes down to this: attainable, reasonably-sized
housing in lively, pedestrian-oriented neighbourhoods.
We like to think about it as balancing public and private space.
Other things obviously matter, like jobs, schools, weather, and crime, but that’s
how we think about livable urban design.
In the US, maybe the place that hits that balance is Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis,
or Pittsburgh.
Here in Canada, it’s Montreal.
On top of being the place we most enjoy living, Montreal also makes a lot of sense as the
home base for our YouTube channel.
We started this channel because we wanted to showcase Montreal as a model of urbanism
for other cities and we still see a lot of value in that.
Urbanists spend a lot of time focusing on superstar cities in Europe and Asia and it’s
easy to understand why.
But whether we like it or not, regular people in Canada and the U.S. find it really easy
to dismiss these “far away” places as being not relevant to them.
“That’s fine for Tokyo, Copenhagen, or Amsterdam, but things are different here in
Denver, Winnipeg, Cleveland, Seattle, Edmonton, Salt Lake City, Halifax” and so on.
It’s a lot harder to dismiss urbanism success stories from other North American cities that
feel more similar and relevant.
Montreal fits into a sweet spot where it’s impressive enough to learn from but familiar
and relevant enough for North Americans to not immediately dismiss it.
What also helps is that it’s not just urbanists who love Montreal.
Whenever we mentioned living in or moving to Montreal to people elsewhere in Canada,
we’d almost always hear back something like “oh, I love Montreal” and they’d often
tell us about their good experiences visiting or even living there, often as a student at
McGill or Concordia.
They’ll often say that living there long-term wasn’t practical for them because of language
or family or something else but people absolutely know and like the city.
That’s why Montreal is a good reference point for advocating bike infrastructure and
medium-density mixed-use neighbourhoods elsewhere in North America.
This isn’t to say that our videos going forward are going to focus on Montreal exclusively.
We actually have a goal of incorporating more cities from the U.S., Australia, Europe, and
beyond into our videos, because it’s fun exploring studies, examples, and data from
different places.
But Montreal will be our home base.
Now that we’re back in Montreal, are we going to live here forever?
Who knows.
Life does sometimes get in the way.
But we’re happy to have the opportunity to live here again, and for that we’d like
to thank you for supporting this channel and helping it grow, whether you’re a supporter
on Patreon, you share our videos on social media and with your friends, or you just enjoy
watching our videos.
Thank you!