As several of you easily guessed in yesterday's pop-quiz, these satellite images show surface parking lots in the area between Bleury and Saint-Laurent, Rene-Levesque and Sherbrooke back in 2002, a year before the Quartier des Spectacles project was dreamed up. The QDS revitalization transformed about 2000 downtown parking spots into mainly pedestrian spaces (that's more than thirty times as many parking spots as have been elimiated in the Plateau this year).  That could be part of the reason why our transit-happy readers voted it the best ...

I have griped about the bike path and I have griped about the trees, but I also have to give credit where credit is due: I love the Place des festivals for giving us the biggest interactive fountain in Canada. The keyword here is interactive: as the temperature reached the high thirties this week, the downtown square became an impromptu, all-ages water park. Who knew there were so many kids and toddlers in the downtown core on a weekday afternoon? Many had gleeful, soaked through parents in tow.

Lets just say a little bird told me. A little bird wouldnotice that kind of thing: with the Place des festivales nearing completion, where did they put the trees? This image above shows plans for the Place des festivales released in July 2008. There are three rows of trees planted at the back of the plaza, along Boul. de Maisonneuve. Today's nearly complete plaza has trees in the Western, grassy slope, but none along the street. As much as the trees add flourish to the model, ...

Rooming houses on Tupper Street, in Shaughnessy Village After being viewed for decades as a symptom of urban decay, there is today a movement to recognise rooming houses as an important part of the city's housing stock. For many people in precarious situations rooming houses constitute the last housing option before ending up on the street, or the first step towards more stable housing. Since rooms are often rented on a weekly basis without the need for a lease, references or background checks, they're easier to access than traditional housing. For people without a steady income they are often the only affordable type of housing. Rooming houses have been a part of the landscape of Montreal since the Industrial Revolution when large numbers of people migrating in from the countryside and abroad needed quick housing when they arrived in the city.  In 2007 there were an estimated 180 private houses in Montreal, with around 3,000 rooms available. They are largely located in Ville-Marie and in adjacent central neighbourhoods. As these parts of the city are redeveloped and gentrified, rooming houses are becoming rarer and rarer. Sometimes the owners sell them or convert them to standard housing units. Others are renovated and turned into up-market bed & breakfast style accommodations. Some have also been shut down as a result of the Quartier des Spectacles project, including the closure of 20 rooms located in two houses that were bought by the Société de développement Angus as part of its Lower Main redevelopment. Slowly but surely the housing stock of rooms is shrinking and those that are remaining are getting more and more expensive.