Over at Discourse Magazine out of the Mercatus Institute, I had a piece on Montreal. My wife and I were there only for a few days, but we spent a lot of time walking around the neighborhoods rather than just downtown or the old city. (We skipped the island with the theme park and old World’s Fair Biosphere.)

We liked the city a lot. It was pleasant, clean, vibrant and bustling, and it felt very safe. We saw lots of families and kids; lots of people just doing their thing. I discuss this in the piece:

The other thing that was impossible not to notice was crime—or, rather, its absence. Montreal is big: about 1.7 million people in the city proper, and over 4 million in the metro area. It’s not huge, but it is certainly large enough to qualify as a “big city.” And it is the only big city I’ve ever been in, certainly in North America, where I didn’t feel like I had to be street smart and occasionally look over my shoulder….

As much as I wish it wasn’t the case, I’ve never really felt that in another big city. For me, cities were always places that took mental energy simply to be in—half of that energy expended to avoid the crazy drivers, half to holding onto your wallet. The cars pose a much more likely risk, as it is, but both impose a psychological tax.

I go on to discuss the progressivism of safety nets and social programs that seeks to alleviate poverty and its ill effects, versus the cultural progressivism held by some in America, which tolerates urban problems or—in a certain agreement with anti-urban conservatives—views them as inevitable.

Toronto had some of that cultural progressivism; all the posters in transit stations, for example, seemed to be about sex, diversity, or mental health. Cue not that there’s anything wrong with that, but Montreal felt like a nicer city without those visible trappings. (And, Montreal is, some people told me, better at housing than Toronto.)

This is what I said about America’s politicized debates over urban issues:

Much of what passes for discussion of urban issues in America is the escalating argument between this permissive progressive contingent—which loves cities but seems indifferent to their thriving—and the often-cruel tough-on-crime crowd—which claims to want cities to thrive yet does not seem to like them very much.

Read the whole thing. But here, I want to delve more into this bit:

Other than its slightly European flavor, one of the first things I noticed about Montreal was that outside of a relatively small core business district, its streets are mostly low-to-mid-rise, repetitive—and lovely. Block after block after block of two-to-four-story attached buildings, each only two or three windows wide, each ornamented and styled a little differently. Each of these was presumably built by a cast of people in a moment in time, not all at once or master-planned….

It looks, in other words, broadly “the same” as other pre-automobile Northeast/Mid-Atlantic cities. But it’s a sameness that we like, and that we create over and over again when permitted to do so. Walking Montreal’s numerous commercial and mixed-use blocks reminded me of those old chase scenes in cartoons where the same background repeats over and over. But I loved it. And there was more continuous urban fabric, and more business and street life, than any North American city I’ve visited.

And, of course, share some photos.

Our first evening, walking home from dinner:

The obligatory old town visit:

A tiny fraction of one of the city’s two urban markets, full of fresh meat, fish, vegetables, charcuterie, coffee shops and tiny restaurants, and more. It’s like Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market, but more. (Quebec asparagus is the best.)

A public seating area in a food court, early in the morning. Clean, bright, free of security guards. An urban space where an ordinary person can just exist.

A typical residential street:

Some of Montreal’s distinctive exterior-staircase multifamily buildings:

Some new and old development by the riverfront (not far from the other big urban market):

Montrealers will tell you, of course, that it’s not perfect. No place is. The problems are probably more visible to residents than visitors. The unusual loveliness and livability of the city may be more striking to visitors than residents. A number of people in Montreal who saw the original piece on social media said as much.

I was trying to put my writing down and just enjoy the place. But I kept having this thought, with which I ended my piece:

Perhaps what the United States lacks is an urban culture, where an orderly hustle-and-bustle is just normal. Perhaps our cities are so unpleasant, by global standards, because we refuse to live in them as they are meant to be and designed to be lived in. Montreal is important not because it is unique, but because it proves that—in North America, in the middle of a largely car-oriented, suburban country—a vibrant, pleasant, safe and truly urban big city can thrive.

It might not be easy to reproduce here. But, as O’Brien says to Winston during his interrogation in Nineteen Eighty-Four, in regard to loving Big Brother: “You see now that it is at any rate possible.”

Related Reading:

What’s a City To You?

Cities Aren’t Loud, Cars Are Loud

When I Say “City,” You Say...

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