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Old Posted Jun 6, 2016, 9:27 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
Well, I do see Djesus' point. Out of all of the other large cities in Canada and the U.S., which one would you rank ahead of it?
Well, I can't really answer that question. It's like asking "which of the large jungle cats is the most like a tropical fish?" I mean, leopards have spots, and so do leopard fish, but those similarities are superficial and, often, coincidental.

Along similar lines, I could throw out superficialities like:

"Boston doesn't have a grid"
"New Yorkers tend to rent apartments and not own cars"
"Washington DC doesn't have skyscrapers, but it has midrises along boulevards and major monuments to an empire"
"Vancouver has the same climate as a Northern European city, so it has the same attention to landscaping and they use the same plant species" (I could probably make a similar comment about a California city vs. a Mediterranean city)
"Eugene, Oregon is a midsized city with a vibrant, packed downtown and whose urban boundaries give way suddenly to agriculture"

etc., etc.

But I think it would miss the point.

What is it about Montreal that is "European" as opposed to a significant variation on a North American template?

Incidentally, I don't think that North American urbanism is always worse than European urbanism. To give you an example, I much prefer the fact that characterful homes in wealthy neighbourhoods aren't hidden behind tall masonry walls. I like DIY workarounds like food carts. I like that stores are open late. I like that the centres of our cities - even the ones that are tourist magnets - aren't given over lock, stock and barrel to the tourist trade (if Montreal were in Europe, St. Catherine street would be full of restaurants selling crappy pasta out of laminated menus with touts trying to lure you inside). I like the variety of skyscraper architecture we have going back over a hundred years. I even sometimes appreciate the fact that our cities are gigantic hundred mile metros that go on forever and are unabashedly large.
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