[easy as pie]

it's hard to know what to think of these developments (nun's island, the habitat sluice, rad-can tower lands, faubourg quebec, swathes of griffintown, some of point saint charles, etc) - high intensity auto-centric suburban development within the old city limits of montreal. on the one hand, it's obviously bad to commit a finite resource (in montreal, that's less land than assignation of new units, given the limited demand) to a form of urbanism that degrades street life and denudes the city of its vigor and vibrancy. on the other hand, clearly the demand signals an unfilled niche that gets people into high intensity living and keeps them in the city. it's depressing to think of how behind the curve montreal and quebec are on planning, it seems that even when decades of poor planning decisions seem finally to be approaching correction (the downtown infill is the most important, i think) we're making a huge number of others along these lines. honestly, montreal needs a benign despot (i suggest bergeron) to guide it forward, the current cabal is just clueless.