For my brainstorm, I decided to write a very rough draft of what I hope my final draft would look like. The first paragraph talks about a few statistics I found about Griffintown, the second paragraph talks about the backstory to the hyperdensity crisis in Griffintown, and the last paragraph gives a few POVs of people living in Griffintown.
Griffintown is a neighbourhood located south of downtown Montreal and is bordered by Notre Dame, McGill and Guy streets as well as the Lachine canal. It is bordered by Little Burgundy, Pointe-Saint-Charles and Cité du Havre. With only 6% of Griffintown’s population being aged between 0 and 14 years old, it is the preferred residential district of many young professionals as around 37% of the population are aged between 24 and 35 years old, which is more than double Montreal’s population of 24 to 35-year-olds. Furthermore, the demographics seem to be changing as this area has experienced the highest rate of population growth in Montreal. In fact, Griffintown’s population increased by 642% since 2011. A huge increase in population usually means that the demography of this region should see some change as many new people with different ethnic backgrounds, ages, cultures, etc. will surely affect Griffintown’s statistics.
The goals of the first few projects for Griffintown were to convert old industrial buildings into low-rise dwellings, an example of this conversion can be seen where an old industrial building has been turned into a fire station. At first, their plan was to turn Griffintown into a neighbourhood similar to N.D.G., where there is a mixture of high-rises, small buildings and townhouses, allowing families more room and more land. But, this plan was soon replaced with a move towards hyperdensity. Many buildings and neighbourhood blocks were replaced with new buildings, and condominium towers taller than 20 storeys. Because of this shift, an uproar occurred and the city of Montreal received a lot of criticism and was accused that they did not put enough effort into the urban planning of this district. Several months after they gave the green light to real estate development project, the city of Montreal later launched a public consultation process with many thinking that it was now too late to make any significant changes.
Now that the backstory has been established, it is important to mention who the disagreeing parties are and the areas that are affected by the controversy. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, it is easy to see why the people who are living in Griffintown are unhappy about the hyperdensity route that the real estate planners are taking. In fact, we can see numerous amounts of high-rises present and hardly sense any charm or personality in this area. Raphaël Fischler, director of the school of urban planning at McGill, says that the lack of imagination is due to the fact that “developers are interested in putting down as many condos as possible that sell as well as possible. They are not so interested in innovation, although they benefit from the branding.” In addition, this lack of creativity has left numerous people upset, people like Harvey Lev. Lev, a landowner and community activist who is being forced to sell his plots of land to developers, argues that “the best neighbourhoods are those with three and four-storey dwellings, like the Plateau, Rosemont, and N.D.G.,” places where townhouses and low rising buildings are prominent. These low-rising structures give characteristic to the area, allowing people to actually enjoy these neighbourhoods because, just like Lev mentions, “who in their right mind wants to live in a neighbourhood that’s interspersed with 20-storey non-architectural towers?”
Bibliography
Friede, E. (2015, July 27). Too little, too late? Urban plan for Griffintown came after the fact. Montreal Gazette. Retrieved from https://montrealgazette.com/business/too-little-too-late-urban-plan-for-griffintown-came-after-the-fact.
Sabourin, D. (2012, March 6, last edited 2015, April 16). Griffintown. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/griffintown.
Ville de Montréal. (2014, June). Profil de quartier: Griffintown. Montréal en statistiques. Retrieved from http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/MTL_STATS_FR/MEDIA/DOCUMENTS/PQ_SUD-OUEST_GRIFFINTOWN_2011.PDF
What does the new census data tell us about Montreal? (2017, February 8). CBC News. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-census-by-numbers-1.3972614
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