Pedestrian space renewal in Montrèal: design approaches for social integration

In Western communities, urban space has always helped to reveal cultural identity, showing economic characters and social structures through morphology, materials, and architectural choices. Many researchers have investigated Montreal’s constructive and urban culture, with special attention to built environment history and growth. Working on the mixing of French and Native attitudes to space design, the paper deals with Montreal’s outdoor public spaces, and with their becoming an instrument of disclosure of urban life with the aim of satisfying material and immaterial needs, in a multicultural perspective. After the renewal designs of the last ten years, Montreal’s pedestrian spaces can be viewed today as a sort of master example of what a vital city centre can become, from a competitiveness development perspective, showing the inner essence and epitomizing the community's heritage and identity. This research takes into account the urban renewal projects realized during the past ten years in Montreal as revealing markers of cultural growth that increases people’s sense of well-being, attracts tourists, and fosters sociability. The paper aims to give back an integrated rendering of the role played by pedestrian squares through environmental and technological considerations. Squares located in the Vieux-Montréal, QIM, and Vieux-Port districts are investigated in terms of aspect, usability, and management. Environmental and technological performances are assumed as indicators of the sustainable dynamics that today sign Montreal spaces, customs, and culture, under the hypothesis that architecture is one of the major catalysts in physical, social, and economic change.