It's a regular Thursday evening. I'm walking from a meeting to a show at the Belgo on Sainte-Catherine Street when something stops me in my tracks.
I can hear salsa music. I follow a manicured path that leads me into Phillips Square. Then I see the dozens of dancers, moving together like they've been rehearsing for weeks. Around them, onlookers go about their evening entirely unbothered by the spectacle beside them, enjoying the redesigned public space. A cultural experience unplanned, and emerging in front of me almost as if by accident.
This accidental cultural moment felt entirely spontaneous, and entirely Montreal. It crystallized something I’ve been saying for a while: our city has good public spaces, and the magic of good public life as a result.
It’s something you can’t quite generate right away. You can only build the conditions for it, and Montreal quietly has over decades.
Ethan Kent, Executive Director of PlacemakingX, is one of the foremost placemaking thinkers in the world. After visiting Montreal and attending Lumino Pro this past winter, he put it plainly:
"Montreal is a city that has a strong identity. And because of its strength in its sense of self, it's inviting in other cultures, new ideas, and art in ways that I think other cities aren't."
If Montreal can be considered one of the world capitals of placemaking, are we willing to protect the crown?
Lovable and liveable
In our conversation on what makes for a good placemaking city, Kent drew a distinction I keep coming back to: lovability versus livability. A useful lens, and an observation Kent has made in his work across dozens of placemaking cities.
As he puts it, most cities chase livability—dense, transit-connected, well-ranked. But the obsession with just livability produces a monoculture where cities optimized for global investment look and feel increasingly the same. And in the case of, say, Dubai, that itself can lead to its own demise.
A lovable city is different. It invites you to give something back. "(Being) lovable is about people being invited to love the city," Kent says, "to give to it, to contribute to it, to spend time and energy in ways that (incorporate) their creativity. That creates a virtuous cycle. People give to the place, which enhances its identity, which attracts more people to do the same."
Beyond Montreal, what does that look like? Detroit, another placemaking capital in its own right, survived an economic collapse because of its people. Loveability is baked into its revitalization. Artists, cultural workers, and developers like Bedrock have emerged because they identify with the city and see themselves in its recovery. One being actively shaped through placemaking.
The origins of our creative identity
Montreal's culture of placemaking started with a unique sense of identity, forged by our language, the Quiet Revolution, and a cultural sense of independence that forced a reckoning with a fundamental question: who are we, and what do we want to say?
Montreal’s answer lives in its public spaces, its art, its architecture. An expression of identity instead of a performance of one. That productive friction is the root of our origins as a creative placemaking capital. Kent describes this phenomenon as generative isolation: "there's a healthy sense of isolation that allows identity to emerge. The climate, the language, the culture all support that independence." The isolation forces a city to become creative in its urban thinking and open to cultural solutions, at the risk of having no culture at all.
It’s the type of framework we can see in Melbourne, Australia, a city both Ethan and I consider to be a strong candidate in the pantheon of great placemaking cities. Geographical isolation from other major cities, and the world, have shaped a cultural identity rooted in play and localized solutions.
Melbourne’s placemaking story begins with neglect. In the 1980s, the city centre was a ghost town. Artists began moving into abandoned laneways for cheaper rents. The iconic murals we think of today were born from that necessity—before institutional support, not because of it.
The result became so distinctive that cities across Australia—Adelaide, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane—commissioned studies trying to replicate it, and global creative powerhouses like UAP were born from it. But with rising costs pushing artists back out of those same laneways, Melbourne has become something else too: a precedent, and a caution, for any placemaking city that wants to hold onto what made it.
Terminez « Montreal est-elle une capitale mondiale de la création d'espaces ? Cela dépend de ce qui vient ensuite. »
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