Photos and Reflections from Montreal
A Walkable, Middle-Density City
This is a departure from purely housing-focused posts to share some photos and thoughts from a recent trip to Montreal. The city has a reputation as one of the most walkable and bike-friendly cities in North America. Many have touted its cultural similarities to Europe, with outdoor eating culture, love of relaxation, and high transit usage. This reputation did not disappoint during my visit. After wandering around for several days, the city offered me a window into what US cities could look like with a little more freedom to build diverse housing types and more focus on pedestrians over cars. Here are three of my biggest takeaways:
1. Montreal is a middle-density powerhouse
The most obvious feature of the built environment is the large presence of middle-density housing, particularly buildings with 2-6 units. Most notable are the famous Montreal plexes (duplexes through 6-plexes) with their distinctive bent outdoor staircases, a signature feature of the city’s architectural heritage. The most striking thing to me was not just the abundance of plexes, but also the large diversity of shapes and sizes of this housing throughout the city. On any given block, there is no dominant housing type, with rowhomes, duplexes, triplexes, or even 6-plexes co-existing side-by-side on the same street. Many of the buildings have clearly been converted back and forth with more or less units, pointing to historically flexible permitting rules to accommodate evolving living arrangements over time.
Data backs up just how ubiquitous this middle-density housing is citywide. A majority -- about 78% -- of the city’s housing stock is in plexes or row houses with fewer than five stories. In most US cities, that same proportion is less than 20%. The closest North American comparison is Philadelphia, epicenter of the American rowhome, and about the same size and population as Montreal. Yet even Philly doesn’t have the same breadth of triplexes to 6-plexes citywide.
These unassuming plexes create a beautiful yet dense neighborhood that can support many shops and restaurants and house a wide variety of household types. Habitants of the plexes range from hip singles and working couples to families with strollers, seniors or even tourists like myself. I also saw public housing nestled within the plex neighborhoods that seemed well-maintained and well-integrated into the surrounding urban fabric.
The large amount of this middle-density housing supports a high average population density of approximately 12,500 people/square mile, similar to east coast cities like Boston, Philadelphia, or DC. This density powers Montreal’s metro system, North America’s 4th highest-ridership system, as well as the city’s large relative number of restaurants. Montreal’s plexes provide a foundation for the rest of the city to flourish.
2. Montreal’s bike culture is strong
Although I knew Montreal’s biking reputation, the high level of bike usage still shocked me. Bike lanes were heavily used at all times of the day by all age groups. This was obvious in the mornings and evenings for commuting, but there was also impressive usage throughout the day and on weekends from delivery bikes, families running errands, or friends heading out for fun.
This bike use is no doubt helped by a massive current and future investment in biking infrastructure. The city is in the midst of completing a 119 miles of protected bike lanes by 2027, and the quality of some of these bikes lanes is impressive. Many of the lanes I saw were fully concrete separated, sometimes even including tree planters separating the bike lanes from car lanes. This made me very jealous coming from the US, where the most we can usually hope for are wimpy plastic flex posts for protection.
Other signs of a strong and growing bike culture were all around. The city has North America’s second most heavily-used bikeshare system in terms of ridership, which recently introduced a feature I’ve never seen before -- bikeshare trailers for carrying groceries or heavy gear. For DC-area folks, the system may seem familiar as the bikes are the same shape and size as bikes in the Capital Bikeshare system. I also found a huge number of bike shops on both large commercial and smaller neighborhood streets. Parks included bike obstacle courses for kids with signs teaching safe bike usage.
3. Pedestrianized streets make for a wonderful summer tradition
Montreal has a fantastic new tradition of pedestrianizing major streets during the summer months. Unlike open streets events in DC, which usually last just one day on one street, Montreal has designated more than a half dozen streets to be off-limits to cars throughout all of summer. This page has the full run-down, but some of my favorites included the Avenue du Mont-Royal and Duluth Avenue in the Plateau neighborhood or Wellington Street in the Verdun neighborhood. Many of these streets (e.g. Avenue du Mont-Royal) extend over a dozen city blocks. Streets flourish with activity in the new public spaces opened up pedestrianization. Restaurants extend outdoor seating while shops roll out fresh inventory into the street on rolling racks. Cyclists roll by kids relaxing on temporary street furniture eating ice cream as customers meander in and out of coffee shops or bookstores.
The pedestrian zones feature heavy infrastructure to keep out cars and support pedestrian safety. No-nonsense barriers surround the zones, including huge tree boxes and heavy bollards, along with signs for respectful pedestrian zone etiquette.
These zones allowed me to comfortably meander around and take a peek into each business without worrying about blocking a sidewalk or making it across the street in time. Many of the zones also include public art installations, play equipment for kids, special seating, and even some vegetable gardens.
Some of these pedestrian zones, such as Sainte-Catherine street in the Quartier des Spectacles, also host summer festivals. During my visit, the street hosted the summer circus festival (Complètement Cirque), where the pedestrian zone was large enough to hold both the audience and multiple stages for outdoor acts. People watched performers in the street, sitting on nearby restaurant terrasses, or even hanging from nearby balconies.
A huge urbanist success story from COVID in the US is the rise of streateries – parking spaces reallocated to restaurant seating. These streateries showed the huge potential of allocating just a few parking spaces to other uses. In a similar way, Montreal’s supercharged pedestrian zones completely shifted my conception of what is possible to achieve with limited street space. There are seemingly infinite social and economic benefits if only cities are willing to dedicate even just a few streets for pedestrian use.
My spouse and I visited Montreal in 2023 and I was impressed by how this North American car-centric city had adapted to become a bike city. The list of excuses why we can't adapt to cycling in most American cities (it's too cold here in the winter, there's too many hills, this city was built for cars) are dispelled by Montreal.