Planned built environments and city transformation: urban design in Montreal, 1956–2015

Research on Canadian urbanism and, in particular, Canadian urban design, despite some notable exceptions, are relatively limited. This paper explains from an urban form perspective, the practice of urban design in Montreal from the mid-twentieth century onwards. The paper seeks to interpret the development of urban design practice by studying three representative urban projects built over the past six decades. These projects are used to illustrate the different design strategies adopted, to understand how urban design ideology/ideas have evolved over time and how they have influenced the transformation of the spatial organisation, form, and aesthetics of the city. The principal theoretical and methodological contributions aim to develop a typomorphological framework to study and understand the physical–spatial mode of organisation of planned built environments and to study their relationship to urban form. Although the political, economical and design frameworks in Montreal and Canada may be different, these are valid cases to define an approach applicable to other contexts. The objective is to develop tools to help designers and local authorities establish a dialogue between new built environments and the historical fabric of the city and to increase the spatial and morphological integration of new urban areas to its contextual urban fabric.