Bonjour from Montreal

I'm spending two weeks with the fam in Montreal. We did the same thing two years ago. My output will be more sporadic during this time. Please forgive.

I think Montreal in the summer comes about as close as you can get to an urbanist utopia. The beautiful old apartment buildings, the ubiquitous greenery, the bike lanes, the transit, the major thoroughfares closed to cars during the summer. People everywhere, walking, biking. Very few people sleeping on the street. Relatively little trash. Relatively little crime.

What's most impressive is that, despite being a major economic and cultural center, housing in Montreal is still absurdly cheap compared to other major North American cities. Even though people are bemoaning the big increase in prices over the past decade, you can find a charming three-bedroom apartment for under $300,000 USD. This is of course partly due simply to lower wages and lower historic demand (relative to Toronto and Vancouver), but there are other elements at play:

Montreal’s urban design is also unique, Wachsmuth added, with most rentable residences being low-rise apartments that are “much more amenable to low rents” compared to the detached single-family homes and high-rise condos of Toronto and Vancouver.

“It’s a combination of a lot of supply of moderate-size and moderate-price units, and then also stagnating demand because of economic and political reasons,” he said.

Montreal is particularly appealing to me because of the language dynamics. I'm a French speaker (spent my middle school years in Paris) and it's fun to be able to fully participate in Montreal's bilingual culture, where people switch between and mix both languages. "C'est un vrai melting pot," a bartender told me yesterday. It's similar to the Spanglish dynamic that exists in South Texas.

French-English bilingualism used to be the norm in much of South Louisiana (watch this video my brother and I made about it!) but was tragically stamped out beginning in the mid-20th century. Efforts to revive it through French immersion schools are admirable but likely in vain.

Here's another thing Montreal has in common with Austin: these signs were posted on the bus this morning, announcing that 99% of transit employees have authorized a strike pending negotiations.

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