{"id":729,"date":"2008-04-08T15:47:48","date_gmt":"2008-04-08T20:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/2008\/04\/08\/photos-du-jour-sud-ouest-grey-spaces\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T12:03:10","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T17:03:10","slug":"photos-du-jour-sud-ouest-grey-spaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/04\/08\/photos-du-jour-sud-ouest-grey-spaces\/","title":{"rendered":"Sud-Ouest Grey Spaces"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/24923563@N02\/2390448204\/\" title=\"Griffintown 2002 by alanah.montreal, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2124\/2390448204_437e2831ba.jpg\" alt=\"Griffintown 2002\" height=\"362\" width=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Got my hands on a scanner recently and thought I&#8217;d post some pics snapped around 2001, during my first excursions through Pointe St-Charles and Griffintown (I didn&#8217;t learn the names for these neighbourhoods until years later). These photos are from the period in my life when the city was transformed from an unremarkable backdrop into a personal Muse.<\/p>\n<p>There was something so inspiring about discovering parts of the city that were messy and unstructured. I don&#8217;t know which was more shocking: encountering horses in an urban stable, or stumbling upon a parking lot of blown-up STM buses by the Lachine canal. One of my favourite finds was the grocery store sign graveyard pictured above. The stack of big red letters spell out &#8220;Super C&#8221;, but there were also retired signs for every other grocer from IGA to Esposito.<\/p>\n<p>The Sud-Ouest was &#8211; and remains &#8211; full of &#8220;Grey Spaces,&#8221; pockets urban land that are neither privately secured, nor programmed for public use. Often these places hold tangible relics of their past, like the gas pump below, but retain a sense of possibility; their history has neither been glossed over, nor set in stone.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/24923563@N02\/2389612945\/\" title=\"griffintown 2002 by alanah.montreal, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3067\/2389612945_26c4ec0294.jpg\" alt=\"griffintown 2002\" height=\"500\" width=\"340\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I believe that these Grey Spaces are what many people fear losing altogether in mega-developments like the Griffintown Project. But, in a system where developers are regulated by urban planners (if they are regulated at all), is it possible to ask for some places to remain, simply, <em>unplanned<\/em>? Instead, we demand more public space in the hopes that this will preserve a certain sense of <em>anything&#8217;s possible<\/em> in the urban landscape. Instead, we are offered sleek public squares, stylized benches, and playgrounds that close early.<\/p>\n<p><em>This post represents the opinion of it&#8217;s author and is, as always, up for debate in the comments&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Got my hands on a scanner recently and thought I&#8217;d post some pics snapped around 2001, during my first excursions through Pointe St-Charles and Griffintown (I didn&#8217;t learn the names for these neighbourhoods until years later). These photos are from the period in my life when the city was transformed from an unremarkable backdrop into<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/04\/08\/photos-du-jour-sud-ouest-grey-spaces\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Sud-Ouest Grey Spaces&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7830,7834,7839,7842],"tags":[560,2087,36,326,52,5,76],"class_list":["post-729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-features","category-neighbourhoods","category-urban-design","tag-author","tag-gas-pump","tag-griffintown","tag-lachine-canal","tag-photo-du-jour","tag-planning","tag-urban-exploration"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sud-Ouest Grey Spaces - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/04\/08\/photos-du-jour-sud-ouest-grey-spaces\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sud-Ouest Grey Spaces - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Got my hands on a scanner recently and thought I&#8217;d post some pics snapped around 2001, during my first excursions through Pointe St-Charles and Griffintown (I didn&#8217;t learn the names for these neighbourhoods until years later). 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