At the Confluence of Geography, Society and History: Montreal and the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscape

Abstract

Founded in 1642 by French Catholics on First Nations (indigenous) land, the utopian settlement of Ville-Marie has become the modern metropolis of Montreal. It was shaped by the geography of its site, the diverse nature and cultures of its people and its history as a place of confluence and trade with the river (Saint-Laurent) and the mountain (Mont Royal) as its main landmarks. Although Canada is a State Party to the World Heritage Convention, the Quebec Legislature acknowledged ICOMOS charters in its cultural development policy (1993) and the City of Montreal has adopted in 1992 an Urban Master Plan focusing on the urban form and architecture, the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape is seldom mentioned.

Yet, decades of civic and professional reflections and debates on the city’s physical and social heritage are consistent with the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation’s concepts and processes. The long-standing attention to the iconic presence of Mont Royal or some symbolic institutions and landmarks translated into urban planning policies and tools addressing views and public spaces. Recognition of Montreal’s traditional urban habitat architecture and neighbourhood structure is reflected in the formal planning tools as well as in community structures like “tables de concertation”. And the citizen nature of the heritage debate in Montreal since the 1970s brought an integrated Heritage Urbanism Consultation approach echoing the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation.

In 2018, the future of the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation in Canada and Quebec rests mostly with local and metropolitan levels at a time of major infrastructure and economic challenges and the re-humanisation of the industrial city. The history of urban heritage debates and growing devolution on metropolitan areas like Montreal offers an opportunity for the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation to accompany authorities and civil society in keeping and shaping the city.

Note on the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation and the 2017 situation in Montreal

(Following the recommendation’s order of sections and articles)

Art.	Introduction (Articles 1–7)
1	The population of the City of Montreal is 1.7 M inhabitants, and that of the Greater Montreal metropolitan area is above 4 M, about 50% of the population of the Province of Quebec and 11% of Canada.
2	Although the rate of urban development in the Montreal metropolitan area is lower than in Asia, South America or Africa, similar considerations have been acknowledged in the recent planning exercise for the metropolitan area and the agglomeration of Montreal.
3	The balance between urban growth and quality of life is acknowledged as a purpose of the planning tools.
4	Since 1867 under the Constitution of Canada, land use, creating and enabling municipalities and the control of private property are generally a responsibility of the provinces. In Quebec, legislation has been passed in June 2017 recognising municipalities as local governments and granting them further autonomy. In September 2017, the Provincial Legislature adopted an act granting the City of Montreal a status of Métropole du Québec which includes some devolution in terms of heritage and urban conservation.
5	In 2006, the province adopted a Sustainable Development Act which is meant to create an overall commitment, accountability and capacity of all departments and agencies of the provincial government. In a rather unique - and very much unoticed - way world-wide, the Act includes the following principle on heritage and landscapes: “Protection of cultural heritage”: The cultural heritage, made up of property, sites, landscapes, traditions and knowledge, reflects the identity of a society. It passes on the values of a society from generation to generation, and the preservation of this heritage fosters the sustainability of development. Cultural heritage components must be identified, protected and enhanced, taking their intrinsic rarity and fragility into account” (article 6. k).
6	In Montreal, the heritage/planning stakeholders ecosystem can be described as composed of the public sector (governments, municipalities, parastatal agencies), the private sector (including investors, developers, professional service providers, privately motivated individuals), the educational/academic sector, civil society (organised citizens movements and groups) and the communication sector/the media, with special consideration given to the presence of younger generations in each one of these.
7	Canada is a State Party to the World HeritageConvention (1972), but the constitution framework grants most planning or heritage-related matters to provinces. These can choose to share or delegate them to municipalities, thus requiring special arrangements. In 1992, the Province of Quebec adopted a cultural policy (updated in 2018) which endorsed ICOMOS’ Venice Charter (1964), Tourism Charter and Washington Charter on historic towns (1987). It has also adopted and used the ICOMOS Xi’an Declaration on the conservation of the settting of heritage sites, buildings and ensembles (2005) as a guide for implementing its heritage laws.
	I. Definition (Articles 8–13)
8	The definitions used in the current planning or heritage protection tools in place in Montreal do not specifically include the Historic Urban Landscape as defined in the 2011 Recommendation. Yet, some of the designations related to it. Whereas the designation of Vieux Montréal in 1964 by the Government of Quebec echoed the French concept of secteur sauvegardé or the notion of an historic centre mentioned in the recommendation, urban planning and heritage strategies in Montreal have long exceeded this concept focused on isolated heritage cores to include an interpretation of urban heritage that includes neighbourhoods, connecting paths and the form of the city.
9	Such a definition could be useful to update the ones currently in use, in particular with respect to the inclusion of cultural, social and intangible heritage aspects. Succeeding to the Cultural Property Act of 1972, the provincial Cultural Heritage Act (2011) includes specific definitions for landscapes and for intangible cultural heritage while empowering municipalities to identify and protect these.
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11	The “approach” definition of Historic Urban Landscape does not find direct equivalent but provides possible interface with some of the existing policies and tools, in particular as there is a growing interest in the living landscape of the city which transcends the traditional disciplinary line between urban planning, landscape architecture and architecture, including conservation.
12	Learning from the underlying building traditions that generated the built landscape of Montreal was part of the underlying philosophy, approach and a defining concept of Montreal’s 1992 Plan d’urbanisme.
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	II. Challenges and Opportunities for the Historic Urban Landscape (Article 14–20)
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15	In the case of Montreal, since the nineteenth century, civil society, public debate and community involvement have been more influential in developing a collective heritage concern and subsequent action from the authorities than in the provincial capital Quebec City, whose historic centre is a World Heritagesite, where governments and the public sector have been more directly involved in selecting and protecting heritage.
16	Since its designation as a historic district in 1964, Vieux Montréal benefitted for decades of a coordinated attention and investment from the city and province with some federal government contributions to ensure the protection of its buildings and archaeology and support its architectural and economic revitalisation. In complement to this strategy, Montreal’s central core and neighbourhoods citizens developed a network of cultural and civic spaces, often around historic cores or defining spaces – including spaces under road overpasses as in the Mile End or old railway sheds like in Pointe-Sainte-Charles (Bâtiment 7), the local Maison de la Culture or public libraries. These are the Quartiers culturels whose definition is voluntarily left open to community’s perception and local dynamics rather than follow a precast administrative concept, thus allowing for creativity, curiosity and care for heritage but addressing it with new eyes. Developed in Montreal’s older central areas like Plateau Mont-Royal, Rosemont or Sud-Ouest, the concept of Quartiers culturels is migrating into other areas even in post-war suburbia, demonstrating an adaptation and reinterpretation capacity of the concept beyond the traditional city fabric and spatial language. An important challenge lies in integrating such organic and civic concept into the more formal and legal planning instruments and strategies, a challenge not dissimilar to that of the 2011 Recommendation.
17	Montreal became the cradle and main metropolis of the Industrial Revolution in Canada in the nineteenth century and remained as such in the twentieth century (even in the 1990s, the textile industry was among its largest employers). Many areas of the city have declined since the 1960s with important social and heritage impacts. Originally, these were mitigated mostly through individual initiatives like artistic hives and private home renovation before more official strategies were developed and implemented by the public sector and its socio-economic partners. Although these actions have impact on the urban landscape, its overall consideration remains largely secondary if not entirely absent.
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20	The Montreal metropolitan area is mainly exposed to floods considering its river archipelago situation with possible climate change impact. Science and historic records have identified a seismicity for the area resulting in stricter building regulations which have put stress on the economic viability and architectural integrity of some heritage buildings.
	Currently, the greatest disaster risks to Montreal’s urban landscapes are those affecting the urban forest, in particular the infestation of exotic species accelerated in part by climate change. For example, an insect – the emerald ash borer – has forced the felling of thousands of character-defining street-lining trees in the USA and in Ontario (see http://www.emeraldashborer.info/documents/MultiState_EABpos.pdf) and reached Montreal around 2011. Since, it has challenged considerably municipal and local authorities in their capacity to develop and implement a coordinated strategy because of their administrative territorial divisions irrelevant to the insect. The response and strategies developed to face this disaster have been mostly lead by forestry specialists, but there is growing consciousness of the landscape and heritage dimension of these street-lining trees beyond their environmental benefits.
	III. Policies (Article 21–23)
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23	In the context of the Canadian Constitution, a collaborative process brought together the federal, provincial and territorial governments to develop and adopt common “Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada” (2nd version from 2010 available at www.historicplaces.ca/media/18072/81468-parks-s+g-eng-web2.pdf) applicable to the following four types of heritage properties: buildings, landscapes including historic districts, archaeology and technological/engineering heritage. The concept of the Historic Urban Landscape is not yet integrated in this document but could be suggested for its next revision.
	IV.Tools (Article 24)
24	In terms of civic engagement and beyond the strong civil society presence in Montreal, the consultation and participation processes put in place in Montreal over the past 30 years are in great part resulting from conflicts involving heritage buildings, sites or neighbourhoods as well as housing, environmental or social justice issues. These processes involve a diversity of means and techniques, from formal public hearings with verbatim records to less formal workshop scoping and explorations or online surveys and consultations. Although there are growing fields of consultation or concertation-type activities by consultants, NGOs or politicians themselves, the main instance remains the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM; www.ocpm.qc.ca), an independent body of the City of Montreal with commissioners appointed by the Municipal Council.
	Other tools include the City of Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities (http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=3036,3377687&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL), a participation policy and a specific right of initiative to petition for a public consultation. OCPM was created in 2002 as a twentieth-century successor of the public consultation processes set up by the Montreal Citizen Movement administration in 1987 but abolished in 1996 under a new political party.
	Over 15 years, OCPM has held almost 150 public consultations, most of them related to either planning or heritage issues. All these contributed to enhancing the Montreal culture of civic engagement and participation of citizens and society to decisions which were left to elected officers or the Mayor only in the past. Thanks to debates over heritage and the form of the city, our society deployed its democracy beyond elections to include participation and deliberation. Yet, a global discussion on the future of the historic landscape of Montreal has not fully happened as consultations are held on specific projects. The upcoming consultation on the mandatory updating in 2018 of the City’s Master Plan could provide that opportunity and integrate a formal recognition of the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation.
	At the regional metropolitan level, the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM) has been established by the Government of Quebec with a planning mandate that includes adopting and updating a Metropolitan Development and Land Use Plan (PMAD for Plan métropolitain d’aménagement et de développement). The PMAD is to set mandatory standards for all of the 82 municipalities forming the CMM to comply with in their master plans and planning regulations. Among the compulsory content of the PMAD is the identification of significant natural and built sites (i.e. heritage) and landscapes. So far, natural sites have mostly benefitted from the attention of the CMM staff and politicians for science-based data exists and provides a comfortable base for decision-making – is it green or not? – whereas qualitative aspects like heritage or landscapes are more nuanced and complex for politicians and planners to handle and have been deferred to some extend (see http://cmm.qc.ca/champs-intervention/amenagement/dossiers-en-amenagement/paysages-et-patrimoine-bati/).
	Although it was required by law, the PMAD was left unattended by mayors and ministers until 2010 when Heritage Montreal and the Institut de politiques alternatives de Montréal organised of a first citizens’ agora on planning and development of the metropolitan area. Civic in nature, this agora brought some 400 participants to learn from the tangible experiences of Vancouver, Portland Oregon, Boston and Lyon and helped develop a momentum that led to a public consultation with over 350 interventions by citizens and organisations from all the sectors of the metropolitan area, an unexpected attendance for a non-conflictual, forward looking and partly abstract document. Confident of such public interest, politicians adopted the PMAD in 2012. To follow up on its implementation, the CMM adopted the concept of holding a biennial agora organised by a joint committee of elected officers and members of the civil society, a concept partly inspired by the ideas developed by then Secretary General of ICOMOS Herb Stovel for a more collaborative definition of monitoring in the World Heritage context.
	In terms of funding tools and strategies, the situation in Montreal remains ambiguous without a radical change in the tax structure for municipalities. In effect, Montreal receives around 80% of its income from real estate taxes which puts it permanently in a situation of quasi-conflict of interest in balancing the protection of built heritage or the general landscape of the city and its neighbourhoods with generating additional revenues through densification strategies to fund social services or economic development programmes. Worthy causes like the reduction of greenhouse gas emission, public housing or fight against urban sprawl also serve as justifiers for densification. This is not consistent with “supporting innovative income-generating development rooted in tradition” stated in the 2011 Recommendation.
	An example of this is the persistent temptation to raise building height limits in the central areas to answer so-called sustainable urban development needs. In a pragmatic approach which could be seen as a form of façadism at the level of the urban landscape, regulation defines a set of precisely surveyed view corridors which are more manageable for city managers or politicians than a broad and qualitative concept of like preserving the iconic presence of the mountain. Other examples include the construction of setback additional floors on individual terraced row houses, building commercial extensions in front and back yards or the densification of institutional or government properties sold to the highest bidders for redevelopment which not only change the building footprint but also the civic character of these sites and their contribution to the public realm.
	This tax situation is generally present throughout Canada, but it is amplified according to each province and in the case of larger agglomerations like Montreal that have to cover a broader range of expenses in infrastructures and services. Efforts have been made to improve the tax system in Canada and introduce tax incentives for heritage properties. Although this has yet to be successful after many attempts like the Historic Places Initiative spearheaded by Parks Canada, tools like a National Register and a set of standards and guidelines have been produced which include landscapes and historic districts/areas in their scope of heritage. The Parliament of Canada and the Legislature of Quebec are also considering draft bills and cultural policies which could include more contemporary fiscal strategies supportive of heritage, including landscapes.
	V. Capacity-Building, Research, Information and Communication (Article 25–27)
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26	Over the past decade, the City of Montreal heritage team has developed the énoncé d’intérêt patrimonial or heritage significance statement, a process aimed at identifying values and their related attributed for a specific heritage building or site (see http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=2240,96369584&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL). This tool is inspired by the work and methodologies of the Canadian Federal Heritage Buildings Review Office but also Alois Riegl’s concepts, the Getty Conservation Institute research on value-based management and the World Heritage tool of the Statement of Outstanding Universal Value. The process is based on a collective discussion involving a diversified set of stakeholders (owner, civil society, municipal staff) with the benefit of site visits and heritage studies prepared by consultants or academics for the owners. One of the dimensions explored in this process is the landscape one, especially when the énoncé is prepared for areas like parts of Mount Royal or complex and socially as well as visually prominent institutional sites like the Hôtel-Dieu or the Royal Victoria hospitals. Although most of the énoncés prepared to date are publicly accessible on the Web, the accessibility of the heritage studies used to prepare them is not systematic and depends on the will of their owners to post them. This method’s has been occasionally applied for urban areas like the Norvick post-war neighbourhood in the Saint-Laurent borough but its use in relation to the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation has yet to be explored and could enhance the collective knowledge and institutional capacity in that context.
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	VI. International Cooperation (Article 28–30)
28	The Canadian Constitution creates a politically sensitive structure to interpret the concept of “member state”, in particular in terms of federal-municipal relations. In that context, a national conversation on the 2011 Recommendation is likely to happen despite the member state through organisations like the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, professional or academic networks or groups like ICOMOS Canada.
29	The City of Montreal is engaged in international cooperation either through bilateral agreements or international networks such as Metropolis, a component of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and the Association internationale des maires francophones. Such international cooperation is generally centred on the city administration, its elected officers or staff and seldom involves collaboration with the heritage sector of the civil society, possibly a reflection of the growing view that leadership is centred on elected leaders in the name of accountability.
	Yet, based on the Metropolitan Agora experience, Montreal initiated and hosted a thematic meeting in preparation for Habitat III on metropolitan cooperation for sustainable urban development with substantial participation of civil society organisations. The resulting Montreal Declaration on Metropolitan Areas recognises the role of heritage and landscape in the identity of metropolitan areas and the need for effective public, private and civic leadership to their success (see http://cmm.qc.ca/evenements/montreal-thematic-meeting-on-metropolitan-areas/).
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