Contribution of planned built environments to city transformation: urban design practice in Montreal from 1956 to 2016

Abstract

[EN] Research on Canadian urbanism and, in particular, Canadian urban design, despite some notable exceptions, are relatively limited. This paper explains from an urban form perspective the practice of urban design in Montreal from the mid-twentieth century onwards. The paper seeks to interpret the development of urban design practice by studying three representative urban projects built over the past 6 decades. These projects are used to illustrate the different design strategies adopted, to understand how urban design ideology/ideas have evolved over time and how they have influenced the spatial organization, form, and aesthetic of the city. The principal theoretical and methodological contributions aim to develop a typomorphological framework to study and understand the physical-spatial mode of organization of planned built environments and to study their relationship to urban form. Although the political, economical and design frameworks in Montreal and Canada may be different, these are valid cases to define an approach appliable to other contexts. The main objective is to develop tools to help designers and local autorities establish a dialog between new built environments and the historical fabric of the city, to increase the resilience of new urban areas and its spatial and social integration in the contextual urban fabric.