I totally disagree. Having lived here all my life, Montreal’s never been cleaner. And I’ve never felt safer in this city.
I remember going downtown in the early 2000’s with motorcycle gang strip clubs lining Ste-Catherine near St-Laurent and really shady punks and drug addicts hanging out in some empty lots with trash all around and prostitutes everywhere. Some areas were really dirty with trash all over the place and it smelled like garbage in the summer. Hochelaga, where I currently live, was a white trash ghetto with people on welfare and motorcycle gangs owning most of the bars and terrorizing people.
Nowadays, the red light district has completely changed. Downtown is relatively much cleaner and safer. Hochelaga has become an enjoyable neighborhood with families and honestly really cool shops and restaurants and nice parks.
The only issue that’s happening right now is the increase in homelessness. It’s never been so bad since the CAQ were elected. There has been evictions left and right and tent neighborhoods are popping up everywhere. There’s never been so many homeless people and beggars in Montreal before. The city has asked for help from the provincial government many times, but they keep being ignored.
I can’t wait for the next provincial elections for the CAQ to be kicked to the curb. It can’t happen soon enough.
I’ve moved here little over three years ago now from Toronto, and I have to say Montreal is much dirtier. But I know the exact causes, at least at the first level for this:
Medium density renters are less organized than single family or high density zoning: with so many people renting (one of the highest in Canada among the big cities) it has people moving around more often, and they are uncaring about their environment. In contrast Toronto high density often comes with property management, while single family zoning areas, even when the house was converted into multiple units, comes with obligations towards the neighbourhood in the form of bylaws.
Ruelles are somehow an afterthought: Whether plowing in the winter or cleaning (with a street sweeper/washer truck) in the spring and fall, they are completely ignored by the city, letting residents fend for themselves. This comes back again to transient renters in an area then not really caring about their back yards in medium density.
Garbage collection is very unorganized: Sure, everyone gets green bins and compost bins, but the actual garbage bins don’t come from the city and it’s the wild west. In contrast, in Toronto bylaws regulated the size and number of the bins the landlord had to purchase based on the number of occupants. Collection was a lot less messy when it wasn’t individual guys throwing various sized bins and garbage bags around, but just pulled it up to the lifting mechanism instead.
Gravel creates a lot of dust: This is especially bad in the spring when the snow melted, but the city is very dusty year round. Either there’s too much gravel use in the winter for the roads or there’s not enough space to capture it. I think the city could do better here by just embracing the snow and ice instead of putting down gravel and salt after they did such a good job of hauling away the snow anyway.
But I’m no urban planning expert, so I don’t have a more abstract insight into these issues.
Edit: to add, I love Montreal despite all its flaws.
That’s a good point. That’s a few things Toronto does better. And I agree that on garbage day it’s total chaos. There’s so much trash all over the place on those days mainly because a lot of people just put their bags directly on the sidewalk. You get squirrels, birds, raccoons, skunks rummaging through the trash and making a mess. We definitely should have standardized bins and regulations for this.
I’ve only seen raccoons on camera here oddly. The one time we left for fifteen days and I set up a camera on our back porch next to the fire escape, I see a big fat one chill there for a couple days.
As a comparison, whining younglings during the night and poop on your porch in the morning was a daily thing in Toronto. They really have that as their mascot there.
I totally disagree. Having lived here all my life, Montreal’s never been cleaner. And I’ve never felt safer in this city.
I remember going downtown in the early 2000’s with motorcycle gang strip clubs lining Ste-Catherine near St-Laurent and really shady punks and drug addicts hanging out in some empty lots with trash all around and prostitutes everywhere. Some areas were really dirty with trash all over the place and it smelled like garbage in the summer. Hochelaga, where I currently live, was a white trash ghetto with people on welfare and motorcycle gangs owning most of the bars and terrorizing people.
Nowadays, the red light district has completely changed. Downtown is relatively much cleaner and safer. Hochelaga has become an enjoyable neighborhood with families and honestly really cool shops and restaurants and nice parks.
The only issue that’s happening right now is the increase in homelessness. It’s never been so bad since the CAQ were elected. There has been evictions left and right and tent neighborhoods are popping up everywhere. There’s never been so many homeless people and beggars in Montreal before. The city has asked for help from the provincial government many times, but they keep being ignored.
I can’t wait for the next provincial elections for the CAQ to be kicked to the curb. It can’t happen soon enough.
I’ve moved here little over three years ago now from Toronto, and I have to say Montreal is much dirtier. But I know the exact causes, at least at the first level for this:
But I’m no urban planning expert, so I don’t have a more abstract insight into these issues.
Edit: to add, I love Montreal despite all its flaws.
That’s a good point. That’s a few things Toronto does better. And I agree that on garbage day it’s total chaos. There’s so much trash all over the place on those days mainly because a lot of people just put their bags directly on the sidewalk. You get squirrels, birds, raccoons, skunks rummaging through the trash and making a mess. We definitely should have standardized bins and regulations for this.
I’ve only seen raccoons on camera here oddly. The one time we left for fifteen days and I set up a camera on our back porch next to the fire escape, I see a big fat one chill there for a couple days.
As a comparison, whining younglings during the night and poop on your porch in the morning was a daily thing in Toronto. They really have that as their mascot there.
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