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The global population continues to grow, which expands demand for raw materials. Meanwhile, governments are developing circular economy strategies within cities and their industries. A circular economy utilizes refurbishing, reusing, remanufacturing, and repairing of products and materials. For companies, this involves to set targets and to rethink their supply chain. This paper seeks to model an exhaustive multi-echelon closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) network. This network functions within uncertainty, and the model optimizes three different objectives. The first objective function maximizes the network's profit; the second objective function minimizes network emissions. The last objective function maximizes job positions created by the network. Optimizing three contradicting objectives is a problem, so an augmented epsilon constraint method is applied to improve the model. Given the rise of fast fashion in developed countries, this model is used in the clothing industry in Montreal, Canada. The model includes three scenarios over five years with two types of products. The result shows the attractiveness of such a network for companies looking for profit, sustainability, and entrepreneurship in the garment industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cities work to accelerate sustainable-transport transitions, the expansion of cycling networks has become a significant topic of debate. Even as cycling modal shares are increasing across many North American contexts, “bikelash” (i.e., community opposition to cycling facilities) remains prevalent. In this paper, we draw from qualitative questionnaire data and quantitative travel data from Montréal, Québec to contribute a situated understanding of factors influencing both positive and negative social perceptions of cycling infrastructure. Our analysis confirms general trends that contribute to residents’ overall satisfaction with recent cycling interventions, including enhanced safety considerations and family-friendly infrastructure. We also identify particular sources of bikelash that require deeper consideration, including conflicting ideas about the impacts of cycling facilities on local businesses, divergent opinions about the planning process, perceived inequities in the distribution of cycling networks, as well as issues of seasonality and modal integration. These findings can be of interest to practitioners and decision makers working to support sustainable-mobility transitions, including recommendations on public-communication and consultation processes, winter cycling facilities, integrated infrastructure for active travel, as well as the inclusion of socialequity and critical-disability perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the growth of the Olympic Games against that of former host cities to understand whether this mega-event may have 'outgrown' its hosts. The increasing hosting requirements and governments' expansive use of mega-events as tools for urban development would suggest that the 'Olympic city' – a term we use for describing the size of the Olympics as hosted in different cities over the decades – has grown at a faster rate than former host cities. The analysis contrasts historical indicators that capture the evolving size of planning for the event based on four dimensions – sport, spectators, marketing and costs – as well as the urban dimension of hosting experiences (venues and infrastructure) with city trajectories based on demographic and economic indicators. This is done through a longitudinal analysis of former Olympic host cities from the 1960s and 1970s and from which continuous longitudinal data are available: Tokyo, Munich, and Montreal. The findings indicate that the Olympic city has grown more strongly than these former host cities, although not uniformly across trajectories. This gives evidence for the need to review the size of mega-event impacts if they ought to continue to generate interest in hosting them in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supporting festivities in the urban realm are possibilities cities have to reduce risks of exclusion and to stabilise narratives of belonging while reducing uncertainty. They are convivial forms creating territorial belonging and inclusion, beyond differences. The paper focuses on urban rituals of inclusion in Montréal, Genève and Turin as practices that foster inclusion and belonging to the city, coping with turnover of inhabitants and the change of urban spaces. In our post-migratory and mobile societies, where uncertainty bears both risks and challenges, rituals fostering a common ground, a sensus communis, as they require participation, but not necessarily a formalised affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a radical interpretive perspective, the distinction between primary and secondary data is itself secondary. Taking as a case study sample newspaper accounts for the motive behind the famous hockey venue move in Montreal (from the Forum to the Molson Centre), this paper will demonstrate what is involved in treating this talk as a discourse. By testing these newspaper accounts, the paper will show that a sole focus on the empirical accuracy of such motive characterizations can fail to take up the way the accounts, when understood as a discourse, are themselves ways of accessing how social phenomena emerge as objects in the world. The latter analysis, it will be claimed, makes for a more grounded understanding. Specifically drawing on Blum and McHugh's (1971) analysis of motive talk, the paper will demonstrate the insights into the culture of cities that a radical interpretive perspective can make in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many cities adopt strategies to increase the modal share of walking and cycling, aiming to reduce the negative impacts of car trips. Despite such projects, strategies and infrastructure promoting active modes, modal shares of walking (10.1%) and cycling (1.6%) remain relatively small compared to the car (54.3%) in the Greater Montreal Area. In this context, it seems relevant to access the upper bound of the potential of cycling and walking. This paper proposes a methodology to estimate the latent walking and cycling trips in an urban area using large scale Origin-Destination (OD) data. The method builds on previous research and accounts for the distance overlapping zone for walking and cycling trips to obtain a pooled estimation of active transportation latent trips. The methodology is mainly based on a sequential process using trips reported during the 2013 OD survey in Montreal. Results show that 5.2% of daily motorized trips (427,813 trips) could be made by walking and 19.4% (1,605,244 trips) by cycling. From these, 57.1% were made as car drivers. 2.8% of motorized trips could be transferred to both walking and cycling. These trips were allocated to either walking or cycling using an overlapping process based on trip distance: 45.9% of them (1.3% of total trips) are transferred to latent walking trips and 54.1% (1.5% of total trips) to latent cycling trips. When we consider latent trips, modal share of walking and cycling would respectively increase from 10.1% to 14.7% and from 1.6% to 18.7% while share of car driver would decrease from 54.3% to 42.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates long-term trends of criteria air pollutants, including NO 2 , CO, SO 2 , O 3 and PM 2.5 , and O x (meaning NO 2+ O 3) measured in 10 Canadian cities during the last 2 to 3 decades. We also investigated associated driving forces in terms of emission reductions, perturbations due to varying weather conditions and large-scale wildfires, as well as changes in O 3 sources and sinks. Two machine learning methods, the random forest algorithm and boosted regression trees, were used to extract deweathered mixing ratios (or mass concentrations) of the pollutants. The Mann–Kendall trend test of the deweathered and original annual average concentrations of the pollutants showed that, on the timescale of 20 years or longer, perturbation due to varying weather conditions on the decadal trends of the pollutants are minimal (within ±2%) in about 70 % of the studied cases, although it might be larger (but at most 16 %) in the remaining cases. NO 2 , CO and SO 2 showed decreasing trends in the last 2 to 3 decades in all the cities except CO in Montréal. O 3 showed increasing trends in all the cities except Halifax, mainly due to weakened titration reaction between O 3 and NO. O x , however, showed decreasing trends in all the cities except Victoria, because the increase in O 3 is much less than the decrease in NO 2. In three of the five eastern Canadian cities, emission reductions dominated the decreasing trends in PM 2.5 , but no significant trends in PM 2.5 were observed in the other two cites. In the five western Canadian cities, increasing or no significant trends in PM 2.5 were observed, likely due to unpredictable large-scale wildfires overwhelming or balancing the impacts of emission reductions on PM 2.5. In addition, despite improving air quality during the last 2 decades in most cities, an air quality health index of above 10 (representing a very high risk condition) still occasionally occurred after 2010 in western Canadian cities because of the increased large-scale wildfires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Geographer is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we assess the performance variation of the municipalities in the greater Montreal area between 2005 and 2010 for a set of 12 common urban sustainability indicators. We then measure the global and local spatial autocorrelation of each indicator's variation in order to describe the regional distribution of the indicators. Three different patterns emerge from this analysis: (1) converging pattern; (2) diverging pattern, and (3) random pattern of the performance variation of the municipalities across the region. The results suggest the relevance of further research on the potential spillover effects of an individual city's performance, which could be overlooked because a local administration's monitoring of progress is generally performed within its own jurisdiction. Examples of urban sustainability issues for which assessment and monitoring could be more effective at a regional scale include urban densification and public security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic had a disproportionate impact on the health and wellbeing of people who use drugs (PWUD) in Canada. However less is known about jurisdictional commonalities and differences in COVID-19 exposure and impacts of pandemic-related restrictions on competing health and social risks among PWUD living in large urban centres. Methods: Between May 2020 and March 2021, leveraging infrastructure from ongoing cohorts of PWUD, we surveyed 1,025 participants from Vancouver (n = 640), Toronto (n = 158), and Montreal (n = 227), Canada to describe the impacts of pandemic-related restrictions on basic, health, and harm reduction needs. Results: Among participants, awareness of COVID-19 protective measures was high; however, between 10 and 24% of participants in each city-specific sample reported being unable to self-isolate. Overall, 3–19% of participants reported experiencing homelessness after the onset of the pandemic, while 20–41% reported that they went hungry more often than usual. Furthermore, 8–33% of participants reported experiencing an overdose during the pandemic, though most indicated no change in overdose frequency compared the pre-pandemic period. Most participants receiving opioid agonist therapy in the past six months reported treatment continuity during the pandemic (87–93%), however, 32% and 22% of participants in Toronto and Montreal reported missing doses due to service disruptions. There were some reports of difficulty accessing supervised consumption sites in all three sites, and drug checking services in Vancouver. Conclusion: Findings suggest PWUD in Canada experienced difficulties meeting essential needs and accessing some harm reduction services during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings can inform preparedness planning for future public health emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth in the international smart city market over the past decade has been tremendous. Fuelled by private vendors and consultants, adoption of smart city technology in many cities has been rapid. How well does the adoption of this technology and the overall design of smart cities align with the needs and preferences of residents? In this paper we examine this question using data from a unique survey of residents in three large Canadian cities: Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. The survey includes perceptions of both the importance and maturity of 23 policy or service areas, grouped along four dimensions (Services, Governance, Social and Economic). The results indicate that there is a misalignment in certain service and policy areas between the types of projects that cities are pursuing and the preferences of residents, indicating the need for broader and deeper engagement with the community in the design and implementation of smart city plans. • Survey results highlight disparities between residents and their municipal governments in smart city development • A gap exists between the preferences that residents place on certain smart city initiatives and where local government direct investment • Cities are aligned with technocratic institutional logic, underpinned by a close collaboration with the private sector [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates long-term trends of criteria air pollutants, including NO2, CO, SO2, O3 and PM2.5, and (NO2+O3) measured in ten Canadian cities during the last two to three decades and associated driving forces in terms of emission reductions, perturbations from varying weather conditions and large-scale wildfires, and changes in O3 sources and sinks. Two machine-learning methods, including random forest algorithm and boosted regression trees, were used to extract deweathered mixing ratios (or mass concentrations) of the pollutants. The Mann-Kendall analysis of the deweathered and original annual average concentrations of the pollutants showed that, on the time scale of 20 years or longer, the perturbation from varying weather conditions exerted a very minor influence on the decadal trends of original annual averages (within ±2 %) in ~70 % of the cases, and a moderate influence up to 16 % of the original trends in the other 30 % cases. NO2, CO and SO2 showed decreasing trends in the last two to three decades in all the cities except CO in Montreal. O3 showed increasing trends in all the cities, except Halifax, mainly due to weakened titration reaction between O3 and NO. (NO2+O3), however, showed decreasing trends in all the cities, except Victoria, because the increase in O3 is much less than the decrease in NO2. In three of the five eastern Canadian cities, emission reductions dominated the decreasing trends in PM2.5, but no significant trends in PM2.5 were observed in the other two cites. In five western Canadian cities, increasing or no significant trends in PM2.5 were observed, likely due to unpredictable large-scale wildfires overwhelming or balancing the impacts of emission reductions on PM2.5. In addition, despite improving air quality during the last two decades in most cities, air quality health index of above 10 (representing very high-risk condition) still occasionally occurred after 2010 in western Canadian cities because of the increased large-scale wildfires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Location planning for pedestrian zones is a multifaceted problem. The selection of best location from a list of potential stations involves consideration of different technical, economical, environmental, and social factors. For some of these factors, numerical values can be provided, but the others are based on the qualitative data. In this paper, a multicriteria decision analysis approach is presented based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for location planning of pedestrian zones under lack of quantitative data. A decision-making committee comprised of representatives of city transportation officials, public administration, and city residents or users is formed to select the criteria/subcriteria for evaluating pedestrian zones. Five locations for pedestrian zones are considered for evaluation in the city of Montréal: namely, Downtown, Jean Drapeau, Olympic stadium, Old Montréal, and Saint Denis. The results of this study indicate that the downtown area is the best choice for a pedestrian zone. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to determine the influence of criteria and subcriteria weights on the decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from the 1996 Canadian census to examine and measure the spatial structure and intensity of urban deprivation in Montreal. Urban deprivation emerged as an important theme in urban studies and urban geography during the 1990s. Since the early 1980s, the Montreal urban area, particularly the Island of Montreal, has experienced an increase in urban social problems, brought on largely by economic restructuring, recessions and the out-migration of residents and businesses to suburban communities. Twenty indicators of urban deprivation are drawn from the census and analysed by way of a principal components analysis first to identify the main types of deprivation in the city and then to measure its intensity. In the process, a general deprivation index (GDI) is devised which can be applied to study the spatial aspects of this phenomenon in other Canadian cities. The study identified six main types of deprivation in the city and found that they were most visible on the Island of Montreal, especially in the central and eastern parts. Additionally, it found that urban deprivation in not confined to the inner city, as several of the most severely deprived neighbourhoods are located outside the central city and even in the off-Island suburbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the transferability of a composite walkability index, the Pedestrian Index of the Environment (PIE), to the Greater Montréal Area (GMA). The PIE was developed in Portland, Oregon, and is based on proprietary data. It combines six urban form variables into a score ranging from 20 to 100. The measure introduces several methodological refinements which have not been applied concurrently in previous efforts: a wide coverage of the different dimensions of the urban form, together with the use of a distance-based decay function and modelling-based weighing of the variables. This measure is applied to the GMA using local data in order to evaluate the feasibility of its transfer (the possibility of locally replicating the measure). It is then included in a series of mode choice models to assess its transferability (the capacity of the measure to describe walkability and predict mode choice in another urban area). The models, segmented by trip distance or trip purpose, are estimated and validated against observed trip data from the 2013 Origin-Destination survey. Significant positive correlation is found between the PIE and the choice of walking for short trips, for all purposes as well as for four specific trip purposes. The inclusion of the PIE also improves the accuracy of the modelling process as well as the prediction of the choice of walking for short trips. The PIE can therefore be used in the GMA, and potentially in other metropolitan areas, to improve the modelling of travel behavior for short trips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Sex differences exist in children’s obesity rates, dietary patterns and television viewing. Television continues to be a source of unhealthy food advertising exposure to children in Canada. Our objective was to examine sex differences in food advertising exposure in children aged 2 to 17 years across four Canadian Englishlanguage markets. Methods: We licensed 24-hour television advertising data from the company Numerator for January through December 2019, in four cities (Vancouver, Calgary, Montréal and Toronto) across Canada. Child food advertising exposure overall, by food category, television station, Health Canada’s proposed nutrient profiling model, and marketing techniques were examined on the 10 most popular television stations among children and compared by sex. Advertising exposure was estimated using gross rating points, and sex differences were described using relative and absolute differences. Results: Both male and female children were exposed to an elevated level of unhealthy food advertising and a plethora of marketing techniques across all four cities. Differences between sexes were evident between and within cities. Compared to females, males in Vancouver and Montréal viewed respectively 24.7% and 24.0% more unhealthy food ads/person/year and were exposed to 90.2 and 133.4 more calls to action, 93.3 and 97.8 more health appeals, and 88.4 and 81.0 more products that appeal to children. Conclusion: Television is a significant source of children’s exposure to food advertising, with clear sex differences. Policy makers need to consider sex when developing food advertising restrictions and monitoring efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing urbanization, climate change poses an unprecedented threat, and climate-sensitive urban management is highly demanded. Mitigating climate change undoubtedly requires smarter urban design tools and techniques than ever before. With the continuous evolution of geospatial technologies and an added benefit of analyzing and virtually visualizing our world in three dimensions, the focus is now shifting from a traditional 2D to a more complicated 3D spatial design and assessment with increasing potential of supporting climate-responsive urban decisions. This paper focuses on using 3D city models to calculate the mean radiant temperature (Tmrt) as an outdoor thermal comfort indicator in terms of assessing the spatiotemporal distribution of heat stress on the district scale. The analysis is done to evaluate planning scenarios for a district transformation in Montreal/Canada. The research identifies a systematic workflow to assess and upgrade the outdoor thermal comfort using the contribution of ArcGIS CityEngine for 3D city modeling and the open-source model of solar longwave environmental irradiance geometry (SOLWEIG) as the climate assessment model. A statistically downscaled weather profile for the warmest year predicted before 2050 (2047) is used for climate data. The outcome shows the workflow capacity for the structured recognition of area under heat stress alongside supporting the efficient intervention, the tree placement as a passive strategy of heat mitigation. The adaptability of workflow with the various urban scale makes it an effective response to the technical challenges of urban designers for decision-making and action planning. However, the discovered technical issues in data conversion and wall surface albedo processing call for the climate assessment model improvement as future demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In fall 2009, a new speed limit of 40 km/h was introduced on local streets in Montreal (previous speed limit: 50 km/h). This paper proposes a methodology to efficiently estimate the effect of such reduction on speeding behaviors. We employ a full Bayes before–after approach, which overcomes the limitations of the empirical Bayes method. The proposed methodology allows for the analysis of speed data using hourly observations. Therefore, the entire daily profile of speed is considered. Furthermore, it accounts for the entire distribution of speed in contrast to the traditional approach of considering only a point estimate such as 85th percentile speed. Different reference speeds were used to examine variations in the treatment effectiveness in terms of speeding rate and frequency. In addition to comparing rates of vehicles exceeding reference speeds of 40 km/h and 50 km/h (speeding), we verified how the implemented treatment affected “excessive speeding” behaviors (exceeding 80 km/h). To model operating speeds, two Bayesian generalized mixed linear models were utilized. These models have the advantage of addressing the heterogeneity problem in observations and efficiently capturing potential intra-site correlations. A variety of site characteristics, temporal variables, and environmental factors were considered. The analyses indicated that variables such as lane width and night hour had an increasing effect on speeding. Conversely, roadside parking had a decreasing effect on speeding. One-way and lane width had an increasing effect on excessive speeding, whereas evening hour had a decreasing effect. This study concluded that although the treatment was effective with respect to speed references of 40 km/h and 50 km/h, its effectiveness was not significant with respect to excessive speeding-which carries a great risk to pedestrians and cyclists in urban areas. Therefore, caution must be taken in drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of speed limit reduction. This study also points out the importance of using a comparison group to capture underlying trends caused by unknown factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Anthropologica is the property of CASCA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: Some neighbourhoods in urban areas are characterised by concentrations of socially and materially deprived populations. Additionally, levels of ambient air pollution in a city can be variable at the local scale and can create disparities in air quality between neighbourhoods. Socioeconomic and physical characteristics of neighbourhood environments can affect the health and well-being of local residents. In this paper we identify whether neighbourhoods in Montreal, Canada characterised by social and material deprivation have higher levels of ambient air pollution than do others. We collected two-week integrated samples of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at 133 sites in Montreal during three seasons between 2005 and 2006. We used these data in a geographic information system, along with data describing characteristics of land use, roads, and traffic, to create a spatial model of predicted mean annual concentrations of NO2 across Montreal. Next, we collected neighbourhood socioeconomic information for 501 census tracts and overlaid their boundaries on the pollution surface. We calculated Pearson correlation coefficients and 95% confidence intervals (CI) between neighbourhood-level indicators of deprivation and levels of ambient NO2. We found associations between concentrations of NO2 and neighbourhood-level indicators of material deprivation, including median household income, and with indicators of social deprivation, including proportion of people living alone. We identified specific neighbourhoods that were characterised by a double burden of high levels of deprivation and high concentrations of ambient NO2. Because of the particular social geography in Montreal, we found that not all deprived neighbourhoods had high levels of pollution and that some affluent neighbourhoods in the downtown core had high levels. Our results underscore the importance of considering social contexts in interpreting general associations between social and environmental risks to population health. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Using the data from the longitudinal study "L'Établissement des nouveaux immigrants (ENI)," this paper analyses the residential trajectories of new immigrants in Montreal during the 1990s. Two methodologies were applied. First, survival models were used to identify the factors that determine the probabilities of moving and of access to homeownership. Second, the immigrants' mobility within the Montreal metropolitan area was analysed with conditional Logit models. The results show that highly-skilled immigrants have a better situation in the housing market, and that there is a strong relation between employment and housing. We also notice a residential dispersion from downtown to the suburbs, especially in spaces where the houses are older and the average income lower. Apart from that, our results illustrate the process of residential concentration, for immigrants from industrial countries, as well as for people from third-world countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are facing a transformation of the political order in which cities are becoming more and more important, partly in the field of economic development but also regarding security questions, specifically after 9 September 2001, such as cultural diversity, social cohesion, and sustainable development. The institutional conditions of governability have evolved during the last two decades. Cities develop strategies at the global level and promote different kinds of collective value. In this paper we aim to analyse these international strategies, their elaboration, and their implementation by using a comparison of Montreal, Paris, and Rome. The various strategies are analyzed as the outcome of dominant political coalitions between the political institutions and very specific segments of civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging with recent social science debates on urbanism, space, and religion, in this article I explore how religious change and the re-figuration of spaces are mutually shaped in cities located on three different continents: Cape Town, Barcelona, and Montreal. I start from the premise that social actors' spatial strategies and existing spatial regimes with regard to urban religion are mediated by the ways in which state and non-state actors draw on and mobilize publicly circulating notions of religious diversity and secularity. My argument is that there are, at the current conjuncture of global religious change, three main processes affecting the re-figuration of spaces: 1. the eventization, 2. the infrastructuration, and 3. the heritagization of religion. While they carry global significance, these processes play out differently in the three cities I analyzed. By identifying these shared developments, I challenge the notion that links between urbanism and religion in the Global South and the Global North are different beyond comparison. Instead, I argue that comparative methodologies in studies on urban religion are indispensable in order to reveal both global structural forces and cultural differences. The article is based on my ethnographic fieldwork carried out in each of the three cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article follows the inception and the development of an unauthorized community garden that emerged out of a re-appropriated composting site in a municipal park in Montreal, Canada. The article identifies the principal reasons and mechanisms that account for how the guerrilla garden was able to remain in a high-profile location for a period of time. The article explores the intertwined combination of the guerrilla garden and the spaces it affected vis-à-vis landscape urbanism and its pursuit of a new urban development paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this contribution is to depict and analyze the dynamics of situated creativity by presenting an anatomy of the creative city and an understanding of the emergence and formation of creative processes in these particular local ecologies of knowledge. We propose to study the anatomy of the creative city by defining three different layers—the upperground, the middleground and the underground—as the basic components of the creative processes in local innovative milieus. Each one of these layers intervenes with specific characteristics in the creative process, and enables new knowledge to transit from an informal micro-level to a formal macro-level. In order to illustrate this point of view, the creative city of Montreal is analyzed through two main case studies: Ubisoft and the Cirque du Soleil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we show how the abstract city - media representations of city panoramas and the factual physical silhouette standing in for the city itself in the distance - is constituted as an emotive geography and how the production of such vistas is a political project, whose aim is to activate a future gaze. Through analysing two cities - Montreal in 1967 and contemporary Shanghai - we demonstrate how the mediatized production of urban panoramas sustains a sense of futurity through two (overlapping) forms: the conjunctional and the hyper-representational. We argue that together these panoramas invite an emotive future gaze which, through the combination of practical enactment, haptic movement in the city and political vision, constitutes an ideological force of modern urbanism. By introducing the conceptual framework of encapsulation/decapsulation, we propose a way of deepening the understanding of the symbolic and emotional negotiations involved in the production of spectacular city landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines how the visual and spatial structure of Montreal's Expo 67, its texture, encapsulated a "future gaze" and how this encapsulation project was related to the overarching transformations of Montreal. Expo 67 was a sight, an experience-scape, and a mediator of Montreal as a future world metropolis. The article discusses how different "means of encapsulation," such as transit systems, multiscreen cinema, and surveillance systems, promoted new ways of seeing, which in different ways were to translate Montreal into a city of the future. It also introduces the concepts of texture and encapsulation as a general framework for understanding the ways in which urban planning, mediatization, and event production are interwoven in late modern societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the residents of public housing, whose mobility is often reduced due to their precarious economic situation and their stage in the life cycle, the accessibility of services and facilities is a fundamental concern. Moreover, in Montréal, public housing is dispersed throughout the city. Accessibility thus varies greatly from one building to the next. The aims of this study are first to evaluate the accessibility of various urban resources using spatial data analysis in geographical information systems and then to develop an indicator of the accessibility of services and facilities for each public housing project using multivariate data analysis. The final results show that there are eight sub-types of landscape facilities around public housing buildings. Overall, half of the residents of public housing buildings have very good or good accessibility to services and facilities. Most of these residents live in public housing in some of the central or relatively central districts. On the other hand, for 45 per cent of public housing residents, there is a low level of access and 5 per cent have very limited service accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, new political and institutional arrangements have begun emerging in differing European and North-American metropolises. These new institutional arrangements deal in different ways with the rescaling of jurisdictions in a context of evolving intergovernmental relations, social movements, visions of urbanity and mobilization, urban public policies, etc. This article is about the case of Montréal (Quebec, Canada). This case is important because from 1996 to 2004 Montréal experienced intense public debates and implemented a diversity of institutional innovations. A multi-level reform of the municipal regime was introduced that comprises measures of metropolitan governance, large-scale amalgamations of local municipalities in the urban core area, and the introduction of a new political and administrative scheme at the borough level. Our focus is on this third pillar as it has shifted the municipal reform into an unusual direction as it activates the expression of the numerous spatial logics of the fragmented metropolis and gives way to a composite rescaling of urban governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent issue of , a number of key players in the 1960s and 1970s school of quantitative urban geography (called Chicago II in this article) set out some of the approach's key methodological premises and assessed its influence in the wider arena of urban studies. At about the same time, the 1920s and 1930s Chicago School of urban sociology (called the Chicago School in this article) was being reassessed in France ( ), and deconstructed in Los Angeles ( ). In this article, we outline a selection of basic models of urban space proposed by the Chicago School and further elaborated by Chicago II. We then consider certain aspects of three important critiques: humanist/aesthetic, Marxist, and postmodern. We argue that none of these invalidates the Chicago II approach to the study of urban areas, and we demonstrate its resilience and usefulness by way of the empirical example of Montreal. Though the results are of interest in their own right, the principal purpose of the analysis is to illustrate the type of insight that a structured quantitative approach provides and the way this approach rests on a theoretical understanding of processes at work in cities. We conclude by arguing that the humanist and Marxist critiques shed important light upon the possibilities and limits of the Chicago II approach, but that the postmodern claim that the spatial development of urban areas is not structured by at least some general processes is inaccurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In a general context of state reforms, there is an emerging consensus on the strategic role of city-regions in the global economy. As it is the case in other city-regions, state-led regional reforms in Montreal are enmeshed in a series of clashes between the Left and the Right, the Provincial government and local municipalities, and the inner city and the suburbs. However, Montreal also presents an intriguing case of territorial struggles centered on cultural identities nested in multiple scales. Beyond the more recurrent arguments for and against consolidation, Montreal is also the theater of a struggle for linguistic rights. The use of territorial claims as a political strategy for influencing city-regional governance reforms and by the same token gaining more local autonomy to protect life in English in Montreal is explored as an indicator of the rescaling of claims for political autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article draws attention to the cultural construction of the loft and the socio-spatial practices involved in its (re)production in Montréal. After thirty years of construction, the loft concept has come to represent a very particular set of domestic practices and aesthetic dispositions that are part of the North-American inner-city landscape. The emergence of the loft as part of Montréal's inner-city landscape challenges the idea that the loft is simply a local imitation of a universalized revitalization strategy. Montréal is a secondary city in the global economic hierarchy, but it is the metropolis of a relatively distinct and coherent regional space of Canada's French-speaking province of Québec. Once the center of Canadian manufacturing, especially light manufacturing, Montréal's retracted role in the Canadian economy in the post-industrial period has left indelible marks on the inner city because of the weak role of the city as a financial center, there is little pressure to revalorize loft spaces, and due to local factors, revalorization does not always involve "arts related investment" or the provision of cost-effective space for producer service activities