Montreal, eh?

A couple weeks ago I had to run up to Montreal. The city is nice, though my first impression was that it was grey, industrial, and rather ugly. Then I found the busy streets and the edges of the old town that mix older buildings with new construction. The city is extremely dense, missing the surface lots common in smaller cities.

That density and mix of old and new is potential I see in Cincinnati. The city is already dense as compared to many comparable cities and has a tremendous, large repository of 100 year old architecture on the border of the central business district. The buildings are largely vacant and are beginning to be restored.

Montreal is dissimilar to Cincinnati in that it got over 10 feet of snow this year. That is part of the reason I saw it as a grey wasteland on first glance. As my beloved Madison, WI was attacked for the spring residue of gravel and salt that covers everything each April (link here), Montreal looked much the same.

Part of their issue is the lack of space to put the snow. Here is a picture of the snow still about 8 feet high between two buildings. There was a giant mountain of snow close to 200 feet high and a quarter mile long in an old rail yard. Because of the record snow fall, this year was the first year they had to use it. A local told me that if they don't bulldoze the pile, it is predicted to last until next year. In effect it would be a man made glacier.

I may miss the Wisconsin snow, but I'm glad we don't have glaciers here in Cincinnati.