“Bridge to Laval.” Photo by caribb
A week after the Gazette ran an exposé on downtown’s “black hole” and Le Devoir taught us how to revive commercial streets, La Presse decided to outdo all of its competitors with a lengthy and ambitious series on Montreal’s suburbs. You probably saw the posters around town — “Quattro cinq cero,” they read, referring to the banlieue‘s area-code nickname — but what you might not have guessed is that, far beyond a simple weekend-edition special, the focus on suburbia would span four entire days.
Credit goes to reporter Isabelle Hachey for providing most of the series’ legwork. On Friday, she provided an introduction by looking at the results of a survey that claims that most Montrealers and most suburbanites are happy with their lot.
Saturday saw a slew of articles on the changing dynamics of the suburbs, covering the greying of inner-ring suburbia, the rise of social problems such as prostitution and poverty, the portrayal of suburbia in the Quebec media, the tendency of born-and-raised suburbanites to migrate into ever-farther suburbs, the increasing ethnic diversity of the 450 and the related phenomenon of white flight. (Links to all of these articles can be found in today’s edition of Headlines.) On Sunday, attention was turned to the relationship between Montreal and its suburbs.
Finally, today’s Actuel section provides a sort of travel guide to the cultural, historical and culinary attractions of Laval and the South Shore.
The bottom line is that suburbia is changing: it’s maturing into something vaguely cosmopolitan and perhaps even self-sufficient. Increasing numbers of suburbanites lead lives that are entirely detached from Montreal; 58 percent of them, for instance, work in other suburbs. Nightclubs, cinemas and restaurants have long been present in the suburbs, but now even multidisciplinary arts centres are opening in towns like Terrebonne, meaning that suburbanites don’t even need to come to Montreal to catch a concert or play. “La banlieue qui s’assume,” is how La Presse puts it.
Of course, to anyone familiar with Toronto, Vancouver or just about any major American city, none of this is really news. The same thing has been happening to cities across North America for years, even decades. Montreal is, as usual, just late to the game, and trying furiously to catch up. Even then, though, it’s interesting to see a local take on a continental trend.
For me, one of the things that really stuck out in the series was the issue of cultural diversity and immigration. We’re in the midst of the Great National Debate over reasonable accommodation and the whole of Quebec seems to be fretting about its identity in the face of immigration from “non-traditional” (a euphemism for non-white) countries.
For Montrealers, this is nothing new, since this city has been culturally and racially diverse for a long time. Same goes for a select number of off-island suburbs, such as Brossard. Most places in the 450, however, are dealing with diversity for the first time. Laval, for instance, is becoming “de moins en moins blanche, catholique et francophone” as immigrants choose to settle there instead of on the expensive Island of Montreal. As Laval becomes more multicultural, tensions arise over such things as employment — many businesses have little experience in dealing with an ethnically diverse workforce. There are reports that some companies “don’t want to hire Arabs” because they might “Islamize their business.”
Elsewhere, poorer immigrants — like poorer Montrealers generally — are being drawn to suburbs with high concentrations of affordable housing, such as in parts of Longueuil, where poverty is already a problem. That is apparently also the case in parts of Brossard, where immigrant aid organizations fear that a growing community of Afghan refugees will become marginalized if they aren’t given opportunities to learn English or French and to gain valuable skills for employment.
Of course, Brossard is, nonetheless, the most successful example of an ethnically diverse off-island suburb. More than 40 percent of its inhabitants are immigrants and its diversity resembles that of a more suburban Côte des Neiges: there are significant communities of Eastern and Southern Europeans, Latin Americans, Arabs, South Asians, blacks, Southeast Asians and, in particular, Chinese. Brossard’s Chinese community alone is believed to account for nearly a fifth of the suburb’s population.
Not everyone likes the fact that the suburbs are becoming more diverse, though. White flight appears to be a very real phenomenon in the 450:
Or, poursuit-elle, bien des pure laine «veulent gagner la banlieue pour fuir la grande ville et cherchent aussi, à l’occasion, à fuir l’immigration pour se retrouver entre soi dans un espace socialement et culturellement homogène».
Comme Laval et Longueuil ne répondent plus à ces critères, les banlieusards cherchent plus loin. Toujours plus loin. «On provincialise tranquillement le 450», déplore l’urbaniste Gérard Beaudet, directeur de la faculté de l’aménagement à l’Université de Montréal. «Les banlieusards s’éloignant de plus en plus, on commence à voir se développer une attitude de crainte et de méconnaissance des phénomènes migratoires, concentrés dans la partie centrale de Montréal.»
Un inconfort qui se reflète dans la montée de l’ADQ et le discours des élus de la banlieue, estime M. Beaudet. «Plus on s’éloigne de la réalité, plus on la vit à travers des biais importants, notamment ceux des médias, toujours en surenchère sur ces problèmes. Les dangers de dérives sont considérables.»
Suburbia presents other challenges, too, not the least of which is urban sprawl. 74% of people in the 450 get around primarily by car, compared to 47% of people in Montreal. Only 18% of suburbanites use public transit to get to work, compared to 37% of Montrealers. When the primary motivation for many people who move to the suburbs is to live in a tranquil, low-density environment, though, it will be hard to get them out of their cars.