Quote:
Originally Posted by Minato Ku
The comparision with St Malo is interesting.
St Malo is much smaller city.
Only 80,000 inhabitants in its metropolitan area. About 110,000 if we includes the nearby Dinard.
The streetscape of Saint Malo is denser.
For a walled city, old Quebec is not very dense.
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That's the thing with "European"-style areas in the Americas though - when they were built they
were much smaller settlements. The European colonizers brought over their architectural styles and urban forms when they founded cities here; which generally would have looked similar to modestly-sized towns back home. Of course, as American cities grew and their societies diverged from their colonial lineage they developed their own styles and for the most part rebuilt their settlements over time. Likewise, Europe also developed in its own direction(s).
For the cities that
did preserve their historic colonial cores though, what remains is now more a reflection of the city in that era than of their current size or prominence. That's why old Quebec City looks more like St. Malo or other smaller northern towns than it does now-comparable cities like Nantes or Strasbourg.
Quebec's inner city beyond the walls for example feels more "big city" than the historic centre, but is built in a much more local vernacular:
https://goo.gl/maps/i9sb4nAC2PxoQ4rA9