Temporary Urbanism in Pandemic Times—Disruption and Continuity of Public Action in Montreal

Abstract

Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Montreal and its boroughs quickly deployed temporary facilities aimed at sharing public space and promoting active mobility (cycling and walking). This so-called strategy of “temporary urbanism” is common to North American cities from the spring of 2020. Several inventories of such measures demonstrate this. However, few of these databases open up the black box of the decision-making processes and levers that the actors have implemented to deploy this urbanism. Thus, the chapter is devoted to these processes, explaining the Montreal case in detail. It reveals the main characteristics of Montreal’s public action. As such, it highlights the local particularities of it, considered at the same time as agile, a source of numerous conflicts but also very adaptative. To conclude, we emphasize on two dimensions. First, the pandemic demonstrates that Montreal public actors had resources to respond to the crisis, rooted in action routines but also in a capacity for innovation. Secondly, that this incremental dimension of temporary urbanism is now considered by public actors as an opportunity to implement sustainable changes, in the longer term, through the deployment of a “transitory urbanism”.

Starting in the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 health crisis and its public management disrupted the daily travel habits of most people. The declaration of a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11 then marked a real turning point. In numerous countries, confinement meant closing down non-essential activities and relocating certain activities to the home. The succession of confinement and deconfinement measures that followed over many months thereafter, along with the barriers created by social distancing, indeed modified the daily mobility patterns of inhabitants. It also affected the reasons people travelled, mostly by restricting mandatory and non-mandatory travel, the conditions of travel (due to mask-wearing and physical-distancing requirements) and the time and location of travel (since people were encouraged to stay close to home). Moreover, in the face of this unprecedented crisis, many organizations issued recommendations promoting the use of active mobility. The WHO also recommended that people get outside every day and stay active, for both their physical and mental health (WHO 2022). Municipalities, who found themselves on the frontlines during the health crisis, were therefore faced with significant challenges. They were responsible for ensuring that, for their health and well-being, people could get around safely and had access to essential services.

An overview of cities around the world shows that the latter rapidly adopted similar strategies, primarily based on the concept of temporary urbanism, practically all at the same time (Nikitas et al. 2021; Paulhiac Scherrer 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, this so-called “temporary urbanism” is used to organize the use and redevelopment of open spaces, whose original vocation is partially or totally obsolete for a while (Law et al. 2021). In this way, public interventions generate new uses, practices and values in these places, for a given time. As such, this chapter begins by providing a brief review of the main characteristics of this crisis-based urbanism (Part 1). Quickly implemented and reversible, this type of urbanism rests upon low-cost interventions aimed at sharing public spaces using a different approach that promotes active mobility (cycling and walking). Despite their commonalities (principles of intervention and intervention techniques), these municipal facilities also have a wide range of names, locations, duration and even uses. Through this overview of the measures, we emphasize the decision-making processes and levers that stakeholders were able to implement in order to react to the situation so quickly. This raises the question of the relevance of these measures and their impact in the longer term. More broadly, an examination of public action processes and instruments brings to light the specific characteristics of local contexts in the management of a global crisis.

To illustrate the governance processes at work, it continues by using Montreal as a case study. The analysis goes beyond simply describing the facilities (Part 2) to addressing how public action is taken in this situation, which was unprecedented for municipal management. We shall pay close attention to the manner in which temporary urban planning interventions are connected to existing public practices and prior policies. We will also highlight the innovative approaches used by public stakeholders as well as the impact of crisis-based urbanism in the medium term. Viewing crisis management as part of the public policy trajectory allows us to more accurately describe urbanism in Montreal within the context of a pandemic (Part 3). As we will see, public action in Montreal focused on agile urbanism as well as conflict urbanism. However, the municipality’s ability to rapidly adapt to the evolution of the situation in the face of opposition also points to incremental urbanism. The municipality has harnessed the transformative nature of this experience, which it can apply to future urban policies. As such, temporary urbanism in pandemic times could well be described as transitory urbanism in the longer term (Conclusion).

6.1 Temporary Urbanism as a Municipal Response to Managing the COVID-19 Pandemic in North America

We begin with a summary of international municipal responses to the mobility challenges raised by the pandemic. First off, these measures share a common frame of reference (Muller and Jobert 1987) even if they are implemented in different ways depending on the context. In fact, starting in March 2020, numerous cities around the world quickly implemented urbanism measures to control traffic in public spaces and ensure residents had access to essential services and businesses. These interventions allowed for a given period of time (sometimes undetermined), a new sharing and occupation of the public space. They created safe travel conditions and promoted physical activity among inhabitants. Such measures can be defined as practice of “temporary urbanism”. This notion emerged in the academic literature during the 2000s (Haydn and Temel 2006) and became established in the operational field from the 2010s onwards (Pradel 2010), eventually being widely used to describe certain methods of planning public spaces during the pandemic (Andres and Zhang 2020; Law et al. 2021). From a theoretical point of view, the new uses must make it possible to enhance vacant places, to test occupations or even to encourage new appropriations in the short but also the long terms (Madanipour 2017; Pradel 2010). But the temporality and the design of these non-permanent developments varies greatly depending on the location and the issues and so are their impacts. Thus temporary urbanism can be deployed cyclically or not (Hayden and Temel 2006; Pinard and Morteau 2019; Pradel 2010). Thus, the concept of temporary urbanism is distinct from that of “tactical urbanism”, which refers to activist and citizen interventions to compensate for shortcomings in public action (Lydon and Garcia 2015). It can, however, join that of “transitory urbanism” when these punctual interventions lead to new permanent installations, uses and values (Pradel 2019). The following Table 6.1 summarizes these notions.

Table 6.1 Concepts of temporary, tactical and transitory urbanism

The concurrence of such practices on an international scale has sparked an interest in examining the specific interventions undertaken, whether these interventions take the form of constituting an inventory of measures or producing guides for municipal action. These inventories were created in March 2020 and expanded along with the municipal interventions undertaken over the course of several months. As such, in the spring of 2020, we documented and analysed 17 inventories that included mobility and urbanism projects related to the health crisis.¹ Of these inventories, 10 were open databases whose main purpose was to produce an exhaustive list of public measures deployed by cities and transport agencies in response to the pandemic, relying on the collaboration of various stakeholders around the world. The remaining inventories were best practice or monitoring guides, which incorporated some examples and illustrations of key developments.

6.1.1 Brief Overview of Inventories

Stemming from various sources, these inventories varied significantly in form and content. They were initiated by associations, non-profit organizations and expertise centres as well as professional urban planners or researchers in the fields of transportation and mobility. Most were developed in North America, specifically in organizations and research centres based in the U.S. A case in point, the National Association of City Transportation Organization (NACTO), together with City Transportation Action Updates, proposed the creation of the biggest database in terms of number of cases (a little over 900 during the summer of 2020).² In comparison, the databases provided by Combs (University of North Carolina), Lyndon and Sitzoglou included over 1100 cases combined. While they were essentially open to the world, the North American inventories mainly included data on American and Canadian cities. The inventories produced by the National League of Cities and Bloomberg Philanthropies (120 cases), Smart Growth America (176 cases) and Lyndon, for their part, only dealt with the United States. In Europe, it was essentially the inventories of French public organizations ADEME (Agence de l’environnement et de la maîtrise de l’énergie) and CEREMA (Centre d'études et d'expertise sur les risques, l'environnement, la mobilité et l'aménagement) that were taken into consideration along with those of Eco-compteur and Yespark. Although these resources differ insofar as they include fewer cases, they are nonetheless documented in much more detail (more in the form of a guide for best practices).

In any case, the primary mission of these inventories is to provide information. The inventorying of urban planning practices in pandemic times, on a larger scale, reveals the measures put in place at the different stages of crisis management—from confinement to deconfinement. The majority of inventories categorize interventions based on their set objectives (respecting social distancing measures, safe travel/movement, access to recreational activities or to businesses, providing shuttle services for employees in essential sectors, etc.). Certain inventories, however, instead categorize interventions by type of public space facility (and the local names these are given). Note that classifying interventions in this manner does not always take into consideration their key challenges or desired objective. On a final note, it is worth emphasizing that while certain inventories aim to document opportunities that exist for implementing the measures in the cited contexts, others opt for a more militant stance that promotes the development of certain facilities over others (cycling, for example).

Once we established an overall portrait of the existing databases, we developed our own typology of the measures, regardless of their context or inventory, while keeping in mind that North American contexts are overrepresented. As such, our objective was to define the main characteristics of the measures implemented by local authorities during this unprecedented crisis, without examining the comprehensiveness of these interventions. This typology was developed by taking into consideration the targeted objectives and the anticipated impact of the measures. Based on this, we identified two categories of measures in these inventories: those related to the development of public spaces in accordance with temporary urbanism—which promotes the use of active mobility and the respect of social distancing measures; those aimed at the adaptation and continuity of pre-existing urban transportation systems based on how mobility practices evolve during the pandemic. The next table (Table 6.2) summarizes the two types strategies. As we will show, the Canadian context is representative of this typology.

Table 6.2 Typology of the cities’ strategies during COVID-19 pandemic

Table 6.3 Inventories used

6.1.2 Redevelop Public Spaces to Promote Active Mobility

The first category of measures includes interventions frequently used by cities in every context documented by the inventories. From a public health perspective, public spaces dedicated to mobility (roads and sidewalks) are key locations where the risk of spreading COVID-19 can be managed. Moreover, the decrease in motorized traffic creates a great opportunity to redevelop these spaces, which are usually reserved for cars, in favour of other modes of transportation and road users. As such, during the confinement period at the start of the pandemic, cities around the world reacted in many similar ways, creating new and temporary amenities on roadways and parking lots and extending existing trails and paths in an effort to ensure the safe circulation of pedestrians and cyclists. These measures generally targeted a combination of objectives: enforcing social distancing, promoting alternative transportation for employees in essential sectors, ensuring a better connectivity to essential services and promoting physical activity. The facilities resulting from these measures were quickly designed and developed, at minimal and flexible costs (construction fixtures, paint for markings on the ground, etc.). The shape these facilities take and the names they are given vary by City. In Canada, different types of facilities have emerged in large cities (Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver) and, to a lesser extent, in other urban centres such as Halifax, Edmonton and Calgary.

This category of measures includes complete or partial road closures. Such closures go by a variety of different names when they concern residential streets (healthy streets, quiet streets, shared streets, etc.). Partial or complete closures also concern roads surrounding parks, green spaces and waterways within the territory. The objective in the latter case is to facilitate access to areas where people go to relax or enjoy outdoor spaces. These measures also include so-called sanitary corridors or multi-functional circulation corridors. The Slow Street programme in the City of Oakland (USA), which was launched in April 2020, is one such example. The programme aims to convert residential (and commercial) streets into spaces for pedestrians and cyclists. The goal is to encourage social distancing (6 feet), reduce the risk of crowding and promote universal accessibility while safely using all of the space available on designated streets and ensuring good traffic flow. Streets are closed to cars (with the exception of local traffic) and open to cyclists and pedestrians thanks to what is referred to as soft closure—which involves installing gates, road signs and traffic cones. New York City has implemented these measures with a programme called Open Streets through which streets are closed to vehicular traffic between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. and reserved instead for other users. This generally occurs on streets that are adjacent to parks and green spaces, commercial strips or residential areas.

The measures identified generally emphasize safe travel conditions but also address the issue of maintaining economic vitality by ensuring access to businesses. In fact, the addition of delivery areas or temporary outdoor patios on high-traffic streets were also identified. In Oakland, the Flex Streets initiative, introduced in June 2020, provided support to businesses by permitting them to use public areas to expand their business activities. Cities in Canada also adopted the same strategy. In Toronto, for example, CaféTO allowed coffee shops and restaurants to serve their customers outdoors in public areas (sidewalk cafés or curb lane cafés). In partnership with economic development corporations and local business associations, the programme enabled over 600 restaurant or café owners to set up patio spaces in front of their businesses.

During the deconfinement period, the focus was clearly on active mobility and the safe coexistence of different modes of transportation, with a view to promoting the recovery of activities (cultural, recreational, economic and commercial). Different mechanisms were added or modified to facilitate circulation in more crowded commercial areas and encourage customers to visit businesses or, to promote recreational and summer activities.

6.1.3 Adapting the Transport System to New Mobility Methods

The second category of measures concerns adapting the existing urban transportation system in response to the profound changes that affected mobility. Beginning in March 2020, there was an overall decrease in commuting in North American and European cities overall. The introduction of confinement measures, the hiatus on certain activities and the implementation of teleworking meant that people had fewer reasons to travel on a daily basis. This also resulted in the decreased use of public transportation. Needless to say, social distancing measures also reduced ridership and caused some users to feel less confident about using these modes of transportation.³ There was also an increase in driving or walking among those who continued to commute to work or access essential services. Moreover, in the U.S., Apple’s report on mobility trends showed that driving increased by 33% and walking by 30% while use of public transportation decreased by 44%. Comparatively, in major Canadian urban centres, driving increased by 56% and walking by 52% while using public transportation decreased by 40%.⁴

Public transit corporations (TCs) therefore faced new operational challenges. They had to continue providing transportation services to those who did not have access to other methods of transportation, specifically when these were employees in essential sectors or members of the public who required access to essential services. However, the decrease in business revenue, increase in cleaning costs and the need for restructuring that stemmed from this context created a heavy financial burden that was difficult for public transit corporations to bear. This resulted in service cutbacks and temporary layoffs for many of these corporations. Some transit corporations adopted strategies focused on providing better access to essential services by prioritizing specific routes and itineraries. Certain bus routes were therefore modified while others were temporarily suspended. Demand-management measures included free fares (complete, partial or targeted), frequent cleaning, boarding the bus using back doors as well as information/awareness campaigns aimed specifically at maintaining services and protecting both employees and passengers.

6.1.4 Understanding the Political Dimensions of Managing the Crisis

This typology of measures addresses the question of the political context in which these strategies were deployed. The vast majority of databases provide a relatively detailed description of the solutions put forth and information on the types of networks targeted or facilities implemented. At the same time, we examined the inventories from the perspective of the institutional and decision-making framework in which these measures are deployed. This framework refers in particular to the scale of intervention, the actors involved, the decision-making processes, the resources mobilized and, finally, the timeframe for implementing the interventions.

It is clear from our review that information on these specific dimensions is rarely recorded as part of the inventories. Where the scale of intervention is concerned, several inventories documented the location of the facilities (naming the neighbourhood, block or intersection) without providing information on the sector or on the selection criteria for the locations in question. Concerning stakeholders, only cities and transportation agencies or corporations were cited as being responsible for said measures. The inventories made no distinction between the different teams responsible, their specific roles within the concerned institutions or the processes at play (planning, implementation, financing, follow-up/evaluation). In no case did an inventory systematically document the connection between temporary urban interventions and any prior or future public action. At the same time, notes included along with certain inventories have alluded to the acceleration of certain transportation policies or programmes that were already planned—however, was a rare occurrence. Lastly, there was no mention of any reactions (support or opposition) to any of the measures.

As such, when it comes to the political dimensions of the interventions, there are three types of blind spots in these inventories. First, there is very little data on the decision-making processes or the instruments used by stakeholders in order to implement these rapid responses. In fact, none of the inventories mentioned the specific levers of public action used during this period of crisis. Second, there is no mention of prior knowledge or pre-existing resources that could have been mobilized to facilitate the implementation of rapid responses adapted to local situations. Lastly, above and beyond temporary urbanism responses, there is no way of knowing if the management of the crisis helped accelerate projects that had already been initiated. Hence, to answer these questions, we conducted an analysis of political processes underlying temporary urbanism during the pandemic in Montreal, the results of which the rest of this chapter is based.⁵

6.2 Temporary Urbanism in Montreal in Response to the Pandemic

To help stop the spread of the virus and curb the pandemic, the City of Montreal and its boroughs quickly implemented a series of emergency measures in partnership with the Montreal Public Health.⁶ The goal of these temporary urbanism interventions was to provide Montrealers with safe conditions for active mobility, as well as efficient access to essential resources in different neighbourhoods, directly from their homes. Viewed this way, these interventions can easily fit within the first category of measures identified in the inventories, as part of our previous typology.

6.2.1 Active Mobility at the Heart of Emergency Measures

Let’s return to the regulatory context of the municipal intervention in Montreal. On 12 March 2020, the Government of Quebec (Canada) declared a state of health emergency throughout the province, which officially lasted until 1 June 2022. This measure gave public health authorities in particular exceptional powers to contain the pandemic. Consequently, starting on this date, a confinement period of 13 weeks was imposed upon Quebecers, which resulted in a partial economic shutdown (suspension of non-essential activities) as well as a massive increase in teleworking and online classes at all education levels. It is also worth noting that higher education institutions maintained teleworking and online classes for 18 consecutive months. Companies that were able to do so kept employees working from home for even longer.

Cities were forced to manage this crisis in an unprecedented regulatory framework based on emergency measures. In fact, on 27 March 2020, the City of Montreal exercised its power to declare a State of Emergency (Civil Protection Act), which ended on 19 May 2022. In this context, the authority normally granted to the executive committee was delegated to the Emergency Coordination Centre (ECC), which has extraordinary powers regarding the protection of persons and health. As a result, all of the City’s decisions and financing allocated to municipal interventions were assessed and made by the ECC.⁷ This allowed decision-making processes within the municipal administration to be decompartmentalized for a given period of time. In this particular context, mobility was at the heart of emergency measures and management of the health crisis.

The modification of activities—most notably related to work but also to leisure and purchasing goods and services—resulted in a radical transformation of the daily mobility patterns of the population. People had fewer reasons to leave the house and, when they did, they travelled shorter distances since they kept most of their activities close to home. Several macroscopic indicators also provided evidence of the major changes to automobile traffic. Namely, in June and July 2020, in Montreal, individuals spent 59% of their time at their usual workplace and 41% of their time elsewhere—mainly at home (Shearmur et al. 2020). According to the data provided by Apple, road traffic in the Greater Montreal Area dropped by 80% in April of 2020 (Apple). And, according to the TomTom application, traffic in this sector decreased by 31% between mid-March and late June 2020 (TomTom).⁸ For its part, the use of public transit plummeted by 90% in April and May 2020 (according to the Transit application).⁹

There were also other factors that placed conditions upon people’s movement and travel. Health Canada, for instance, imposed social distancing measures through which individuals were required to stay 2 m apart in public areas in an effort to help stop the virus from spreading and curb the pandemic. These measures, however, in no way prevented people from travelling to access businesses and essential services. Moreover, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and Quebec Public Health encouraged daily physical activity, both for mental health and overall well-being (in reference to the ECC’s recommendations). The public was therefore invited to go outdoors and get active every day—by walking or biking, for example. In this regard, Montreal was much like the rest of Canada insofar as access to public spaces and areas was not restricted. In fact, the use of parks soared to new heights, resulting in the latter being overrun and overcrowded. The challenge then became ensuring that everyone had access to public spaces and facilitating travel to and from the City’s parks and green spaces.

Needless to say, health challenges and the ensuing changes directly affected the City of Montreal which, like other cities around the world, saw itself as obligated to act quickly. The municipality also wished to prevent a mass return to driving, which could result in car travel being viewed as safer than public areas and public transportation, both associated with health risks. With this in mind, the City focused on the temporary reconfiguration of public spaces. The objective of this was two-fold—creating new spaces in which pedestrians and cyclists could share the road differently, and implement a walkable network connecting the City’s parks. These reconfigurations stem from two levels of decision making and intervention—the boroughs and the central government (the City of Montreal). Indeed, they were both inspired from many guidelines published in spring 2020¹⁰ but also from their own internal experience for years.

6.2.2 Interventions in Public Spaces at Two Levels

Within the context of the health crisis, boroughs¹¹ are the first to quickly intervene by setting up sanitary corridors to ensure safe access to essential businesses and services on the streets they are responsible for. These corridors are generally marked off by metal gates, transforming a few parking spots into pedestrian pathways or bike paths in some instances. Certain neighbourhoods take this reallocation of public areas even further by completely or partially closing off some of their streets to use them instead for outdoor recreational activities located close to living areas. As such, Family Streets, Active Streets and Play Streets were implemented over the course of the summer 2020 period. These temporary amenities were also created using metal gates as well as panels, construction materials, paint for markings on the ground and even flower boxes.

The central municipal government provided support to boroughs through the creation and distribution of a guidebook. But this particular guidebook contains all of the information that might prove useful in helping with decision making and quickly setting up temporary facilities, while still ensuring that the latter are effective. One of the main challenges is ensuring a certain level of consistency among interventions. The guidebook is intended to act as a lever to ensure a connectivity between the facilities set up by the boroughs and those the City plans to implement within its territory. It also guides interventions from a safety perspective. It suggests methods for choosing streets where intervention is a priority and provides approaches that can be used to re-divide streets according to the situation. As such, each type of redeveloped street (slow, family, shared, etc.) can be adapted to the environment into which the project must be integrated. The guidebook also provides more technical information on rephrasing traffic lights, adapting road markings, ensuring universal accessibility, managing waiting lines and dealing with outdoor patios located near sanitary corridors. From an institutional standpoint, it is the Service de concertation des arrondissements (the borough collaboration department) that is mandated with “coordinating tactical action” (Montreal Ombudsman 2020: 18). In this context, an “ECC liaison officer” is appointed to ensure the coordination between “the ECC’s strategic decisions and the tactical decisions of the departments and boroughs concerned” (Montreal Ombudsman 2020: 18).

Along with this, the City of Montreal also launched a City-wide municipal action plan in May 2020—an ambitious temporary urbanism plan for the summer season through which it proposed the creation of 112 kms of “Safe Active Roads” (SARs). But the plan also recalled that 88 km of streets redeveloped for the benefit of pedestrians and cyclists by the boroughs; it added to this the new permanent cycling infrastructures already planned for the summer (24 km of the Réseau express vélo (REV); 33 km of the non-REV cycling network; 70 kms of local cycling network, planned by the boroughs). The mayor’s announcement was therefore resounding, proposing 327 km of new pedestrian and bicycle lanes.

The Direction de la mobilité (mobility directorate), part of the City’s Urban Planning and Mobility Department, was entrusted with creating and implementing the SARs. The plan’s strategy focused on the reallocation of public space to benefit pedestrians, cyclists and Montreal residents in general. The objective was to promote safe active travel for everyone and encourage users who had abandoned public transit in favour of active modes of transportation. In keeping with the scale of the plan, SARs were designed to be part of a larger interconnected network to facilitate the daily mobility of Montreal residents and promote outdoor activities, these pathways were created to connect residential streets to larger parks and green spaces. SARs were also intended to support economic recovery by facilitating access to local shops and businesses.¹² As such, portions of these pathways are located or connected to commercial areas.

6.2.3 Strategic Cycling Facilities

Actually, far from the announcement, the plan for SARs resulted in the creation of 24.5 km of bike paths and 13.5 km of pedestrian paths during the summer of 2020. Focused primarily on cycling, SARs proposed enhancing the bike path network (by doubling the number of bike paths, specifically between high-travel areas) and creating new paths among those included in Montreal’s Bike Plan (2019). This Bike Plan outlines future paths to be implemented based on a political consensus reached between the boroughs and the City. It was therefore mobilized by the Direction de la Mobilité in 2020 to be used as a guide for prioritizing interventions.

Incidentally, it should be noted that “regular” urbanism remained on track, despite the health crisis. In fact, the City successfully completed one of the flagship projects of its mandate, the first portion of the Express Bike Network (Réseau express vélo or REV). Keep in mind that, when Valérie Plante and her Projet Montréal party took office for the first time in 2017, it marked a major turning point. Often referred to as the “sustainable mobility mayor”, Ms. Plante has many projects to transform the mobility of Montrealers (extension of the bike path, new metro line, Vision Zero policy, etc.). Accordingly, Mayor Plante was quickly able to secure the adoption of the Express Bike Network project, a dedicated sustainable infrastructure made up of 17 new bike paths spanning 184 km in total. Considering the health and active mobility challenges related to the pandemic, the municipal team decided to stay the course when COVID began in 2020. It therefore did everything in its power to complete the first portion of the Express Bike Network—namely, 8.7 km of separate lanes built on either side of Saint-Denis/Berri/Lajeunesse streets in the summer of 2020.

6.3 Agile Urbanism, Contested and Incremental in Nature

In Montreal, as in numerous other cities, temporary urbanism in response to the pandemic is characterized by how quickly solutions were developed and implemented. A mere month after the routes covered by SARs were planned out, they were already implemented. In this section, we are opening the black box of governance tools and processes that fuelled this urban planning initiative, the details of which have yet to be documented. The objective is to highlight the levers that local stakeholders have at their disposal to achieve agility in their interventions, but also to continually adapt facilities to ensure the needs of the population are met to the greatest possible extent. While this agility was fuelled internally through the municipal administration’s assets (expertise, previous plans), it was also the result of unprecedented experimentation. The incremental nature of the interventions, for its part, was the result of follow-up methods applied over time. Keep in mind that this ongoing step-by-step adaptation process was also a reaction to the many criticisms the municipal administration was forced to contend with in the summer of 2020.

6.3.1 Assets for Tailored Crisis Management

As mentioned above, the establishment of the ECC involved an unprecedented decision-making process. All of the chosen SARs required prior approval from the centre, which would be financing these specific routes once approved. It should be noted that each of these routes had to be justified by the health crisis. In this particular context, all of the measures employed are considered unusual and temporary.

Although this was an entirely new situation for municipal authorities, they nonetheless mobilized several of the municipal administration’s internal levers. In fact, the Direction de la Mobilité had possessed a great deal of internal expertise regarding active mobility for quite some time, and this knowledge was put to use very quickly. Several professionals used a programme aimed at implementing shared pedestrian roads (Programme d’implantation des Rues piétonnes et Partagées or PIRPP), launched in 2015, as a reference point. This small-scale temporary urbanism summer programme provided an opportunity to test out and evaluate road-sharing and pedestrianization projects. The City’s internal expertise was also sourced in technical documents such as the guide for the sustainable development of Montreal streets—Guide d’aménagement durable des rues de Montréal (which consists of several theme-based parts and has been published regularly since 2010). Thanks to its expertise, the City was able to quickly produce and distribute the guide in order to support the temporary urbanism processes of its boroughs. Moreover, recently updated plans were used for the purpose of identifying the best routes. For instance, Montreal’s Bike Plan, adopted in 2019, made it possible to quickly choose specific SARs to be used for cycling. Using a pre-existing plan is also a great strategy that certain boroughs can use to create their own facilities. At this level, local mobility plans are used if they already exist.

Despite these assets, it is important to keep in mind that this is a rather unprecedented situation to which municipal teams must adapt in record time. Strategically speaking, the inherent challenges and solutions that need to be provided are unlike anything experienced before. For instance, pre-pandemic temporary urbanism practices (PIRPP) were basically only deployed on a smaller scale. The pandemic, however, required an urbanism response on a much larger scale—namely, for the Island of Montreal overall. The solutions were developed to be part of a network that runs from one shore of the island to the other. Furthermore, the urgent nature of the situation meant that the City had to work quickly and put continuous monitoring mechanisms into place to validate the effectiveness of the solutions. At the same time, these interventions have been the subject of considerable criticism in the media as well as in political and legal circles. This directly impacted the type of action taken by the City and played a key role in the short and medium-term evolution of municipal interventions.

6.3.2 Dealing with Public, Political and Legal Criticism

It goes without saying that the ECC’s mechanisms and the issues to be addressed disrupted traditional decision-making processes. These processes tend to be spread out over time and rest upon consultation and collaboration with different stakeholders. However, in this very specific context, the City was not required to consult with any other party, including the public. Hence, the SARs were implemented at a speed that drew criticism from various sources, the repercussions of which was tremendous.

Some of this criticism originated first and foremost from the City’s partners. Specifically, boroughs felt like they were backed into a corner due to the fast-paced and centralized decision-making process that immediately imposed SARs upon their neighbourhoods. Keep in mind that boroughs are on the front lines when it comes to managing the reactions of local populations and road users. Moreover, certain businessowners strongly opposed the removal of parking spots in front of their businesses and the reallocation of road space in favour of collective and active modes of transportation. Unhappy residents also saw street parking spots near their homes disappear from one day to the next, without prior notice. These sometimes vehement criticisms received extensive media coverage, both locally and nationally. They were also backed by the interim leader of the opposition party, Ensemble Montréal, who adopted a strong stance from the outset of the project, which he claimed was imposed upon Montrealers. His main objections were the lack of prior consultation and the excessive priority given to cycling facilities. According to him, such facilities negatively impacted residents and merchants by causing traffic and encroaching upon parking spaces on many residential streets and commercial arteries (Agence QMI, 15 May 2020).

To take things a step further, many opponents of the development opted to take the legal route of filing a complaint with the City of Montreal’s Ombudsman. The Ombudsman is “an entity (…) independent from the municipal administration that offers citizens who (feel that they) have been adversely affected by the decisions, actions or omissions of the City of Montréal recourse that is easily accessible and free. (…)”.¹³ When receiving a complaint, the Ombudsman evaluates any possible harm and investigates the case when required. Depending on the results, the Ombudsman then makes recommendations to the City in order to “change the decision or correct the situation”.¹⁴ During the summer of 2020, 240 admissible complaints (out of 300 received) were processed.¹⁵ These complaints concerned three types of interventions: the temporary facilities put into place by three boroughs, five SARs implemented by the City, and the first portion of the REV that was in the process of being built in the summer of 2020. Those who filed the complaints were cyclists, seniors, persons with reduced mobility and members of families that owned cars. Note that, in the end, few complaints were made by businessowners.

In her report, the Ombudsman emphasized that the main reasons for the complaints were safety, universal accessibility and communication with citizens.¹⁶ Some of the complaints also concerned the absence of a consensus between the City and boroughs. In the wake of these findings, which are widely documented in the report, recommendations were made while specifying the timeframes and responsibilities of interventions in an effort to improve contentious situations. Where the safety of facilities is concerned, the report includes a request that the City make certain adjustments in a timely manner, in collaboration with different stakeholders. The Ombudsman also issued recommendations for similar facilities in the future, specifically where the decision-making processes and collaborations between different levels are concerned. She also recommended better communication and transparency of information exchanged between the different decision-making levels and the public. The complaints received and the Ombudsman’s report had a significant impact on the action taken by the City. Due to the high tension, the City reacted on several fronts, as we will examine in the next section.

6.3.3 Ongoing Adaptation Process

First and foremost, it is important to emphasize that SARs were officially accompanied by an ongoing adaptation process, both within the City and within boroughs. This monitoring was mainly the result of a need to respect public health measures. It also resulted in changes that needed to be made over time to ensure that the facilities remained safe and comfortable for users and respected the aesthetics of the surroundings. In addition to the criticisms mentioned earlier, the Direction de la mobilité was under tremendous pressure to ensure the safety of the facilities from the very start. As such, the Vision Zero municipal policy¹⁷ remained the framework for action throughout the process and road engineers were mandated with creating unprecedented temporary facilities. In addition, a major institutional monitoring system was implemented. Starting in April 2020, several working committees were created within the central municipal government (City of Montréal) in an effort to bring together all of the organizations affected by the temporary facilities (regional public health department, police services, fire department, public transit, highway infrastructure services, the Service de l’urbanisme et mobilité (SUM), boroughs and communications employees). Meetings were frequent and focused on recurrent on-site observations. Members of the working committees were invited to report problems and propose solutions. Interventions were mediated and carried out accordingly. The City also promptly made the changes requested by the Ombudsman over the course of the summer and even initiated its own changes while providing the Ombudsman with a continuous follow-up.

It should be noted that no other evaluation of SARs (of their uses or user satisfaction) was initially planned as part of the ECC’s decision-making process.¹⁸ However, in the face of criticism and opposition, the SUM finally decided an evaluation would be opportune. A steering committee—composed of members from the various departments of the SUM, the Service de l'expérience citoyenne et des communications (citizen experience and communications department), the Service du Développement économique, the design bureau and firms (Segma, Eco-compteur) as well as university researchers and economic development corporation representatives—was established. Five evaluation exercises were carried out to measure the impact of the temporary facilities: monitoring and evaluation of the safety of facilities; an evaluation of the use of the facilities and user satisfaction (survey); an evaluation of the universal accessibility of the facilities; an economic portrait and an evaluation of the satisfaction of those who own businesses on pedestrianized streets (survey); and, an evaluation of the design of facilities based on 5 projects. The results of these evaluations, however, were poorly publicized, with the exception of some data concerning the satisfaction of SAR users that appeared in the press. Despite being highly criticized, SARs were highly frequented during the summer of 2020, meeting local and active mobility needs as a result. Satisfaction surveys showed that the users’ level of satisfaction was high, specifically with regard to the safety and user-friendly aspect of the temporary facilities. Despite this, the City preferred not to disseminate these studies, perhaps to avoid additional criticism.

Due to the status and regulatory framework of the emergency measures, all temporary facilities were required to be dismantled starting September 2020, as planned by the ECC. However, in the spring of 2021, the City resurrected a temporary urbanism initiative in favour of active mobility. Through this renewed initiative, the City demonstrated its ability to use everything it had learned from the 2020 experience to significantly redirect its plan for the summer. The Ombudsman’s report was used a key reference for this shift, with several of its recommendations guiding decision-making processes and implementation of measures.

6.3.4 Temporary Urbanism Decentralized in 2021

Similar to the 2020 plan, the summer 2021 plan was based upon a temporary urbanism approach that promoted active mobility. The objective in 2021, however, was to boost economic recovery by supporting local businesses. Consequently, the temporary facilities fell under the responsibility of the Service du développement économique rather than of the SUM and the Direction de la Mobilité.¹⁹ These facilities were included as part of the 2021 municipal economic recovery plan entitled Acting Now to Prepare Recovery. Note that cycling was now no longer considered as a separate entity with regard to the facilities. The strong criticism against SARs and the REV as well as the outcome of the November 2021 municipal elections definitely affected the situation. While the Mayor had been demonstrating her support for active mobility for several years, she now also had to assume her role as an economic leader. Note that, at that particular time, challenges related to the pandemic were somewhat less daunting—the 3rd wave was at the tail end in Quebec and the vaccination campaign was progressing fairly well. Municipal governments shifted their focus to economy recovery, most notably as it pertains to the local businesses, who had suffered a great deal.

In order to promote greater social acceptability as well as peaceful collaboration between the various stakeholders involved, the City proposed that these temporary development projects be initiated and managed by the boroughs themselves. This decentralization was considered a better option for ensuring more effective supervision, communication with the population and monitoring of developments. A call for proposals from the City, along with funding, allowed boroughs and local business development corporations (BDCs) to submit projects that focused on pedestrianizing major commercial arteries in their neighbourhoods.²⁰ The proposed project did, however, have to meet a few requirements. The design needed to be based on developing spaces for relaxation and spaces that allowed for the use of soft mobility in safe surroundings, both for residents and visitors. Projects also needed to be pre-approved by at least 50% of affected businessowners. To do so, boroughs and SDCs were required to obtain formal agreements from the majority of affected businessowners and the members of the SDC. Finally, the projects had to include a process for disseminating information and consulting local populations.

With all of the conditions for success in place, all that was left to do was get the boroughs on board before decentralizing the project design process. The City indeed recognized that boroughs possessed expertise with regard to temporary urbanism. In fact, certain boroughs or projects had already taken advantage of the pedestrian and shared-use streets programme or, more recently, the SARs in 2020. Conditions were also greatly improved in terms of communication with citizens. The boroughs were closer to the population and their communication strategies were generally more adapted and effective than those of the central municipal administration. In the end, 13 projects were selected and implemented by the boroughs—mainly central boroughs, which are well known for this type of project and have readily embraced the approach. Note that certain boroughs face more significant political challenges and that some teams have been impaired by the effects of the COVID-19 crisis.

Several methods were used to monitor and evaluate projects. The City’s evaluation methods were expected to be integrated with those of the stakeholders so as not to overburden citizens and consumers. It should be noted that merchant associations were quick to launch their own customer surveys. The City, seeing these facilities as a new opportunity to experiment in vivo, implemented a new monitoring-evaluation system. The hope was that the experiences of the summer of 2021 (like those of 2020) would serve as a lever for implementing development objectives into the future Urban Planning and Mobility Plan (UPM) to be adopted in 2023. Several themes were examined as part of this exercise: the behaviour of users (same questions as previous years along with additional questions for the 13 territories concerning traffic, parking accessibility and public transit); the involvement and experiences of businessowners (specifically related to delivery and supply); integration of design (via the design firm) and universal accessibility (via boroughs). The City’s objective was to be transparent in communicating its goals and how temporary projects were developed and funded. Evaluation results, however, were more difficult to compile and report due to the proliferation of follow-up programmes. The information gathered essentially served as an internal monitoring instrument for the teams involved. Regardless of any issues, the results were certainly very encouraging since, in 2022, the City launched a three-year pedestrianization programme. Hence, in the spring of 2022, the following was posted to the City’s Web site: “Following the resounding success of the pedestrianization projects over the last two years, the City of Montreal is pleased to announce that projects can now be financed for a period of three years, thereby providing commercial arteries with the predictability they seek. This initiative will simplify the process for boroughs and commercial development societies who wish to pedestrianize their arteries during the summer”.²¹ A budget of $12 M²² over 3 years has been earmarked for this policy and, starting in 2022, a total of 10 projects will be able to benefit from the financial assistance.

6.4 Conclusion

In North America, the case study of Montreal well highlights the processes of “temporary urbanism” focused on “redeveloping public spaces to promote active mobility”, in response of the COVID-19 pandemic. It illustrates the similar facilities implemented in Montreal compared to other North American cities revealed through our analysis of inventories (Sect. 6.1 of the chapter), but also the weight of the local context in the modelling of such a strategy. Thus, the analysis contributes to better understand the decision-making process underlying this kind of strategy. As elsewhere in Canada (e.g. Toronto, Vancouver), the public response taken in Montreal to deal with this crisis was clearly reactive and ambitious in nature, not to mention the fact that it took place in an unprecedented regulatory framework dictated by emergency measures. Several instruments were mobilized to ensure the proper integration of temporary urbanism measures in local contexts as well as their consistency and continuity, given their application to a largescale network. Our analysis of this agility demonstrates the importance of mobilizing different resources within municipal administrations using pre-existing knowledge and know-how as well as previously adopted road maps. But such a case study also allows us to conclude that the local crisis’ governance presents unique characteristics.

While numerous North American cities opted to make some solutions they introduced a permanent fixture, Montreal completely dismantled the facilities. It chose to apply its pedestrianization programme solely during the summer for three years.²³ Furthermore, the decision to promote active modes of transportation during the pandemic varies in magnitude. For instance, cycling was a particularly important part of SARs in 2020 but no longer in the years that followed. We show that the local context (political, social) and, more specifically, the conditions surrounding the governance of the health crises, largely influences the solutions put forth. It also sheds light on the forms of action taken, specifically by illustrating their strengths and weaknesses.

Otherwise, in the face of technical challenges and opposition, actors were forced to lower their ambitions. For instance, while it had initially anticipated implementing 80 km of temporary roads in boroughs, boroughs only completed 30 km in the end. The situation was similar for SARs, but it is worth noting that this did not compromise the initial plan. The criticisms and requests made by the Ombudsman, for their part, generated a swift response. Not only did the City immediately make the most important changes, it also decided to take things further. In fact, the implementation of SARs was quickly viewed as a unique opportunity. The in-situ observations and data collection were intended to be used as post-pandemic steering instruments. For instance, certain observations gave rise to new experiments in 2021 concerning the cohabitation of cyclists, public transport users and pedestrians as well as safety and universal accessibility at certain bus stops. As such, the integration of SAR bike paths is considered as a potential vector for accelerating the implementation of the Bike Plan. This does not mean, however, that the Plan is without criticism. In fact, it is often condemned for lacking a detailed assessment and a ranking of actions to be taken. The pandemic, it would seem, has impaired the teams’ ability to complete these two aspects of the plan.

Another major local challenge during the pandemic has been to implement the first portion of the REV when the project appears inopportune to some. In fact, businessowners impacted by the work being done were unhappy with having to deal with yet another obstacle during the economic crisis. Moreover, the project could just have easily failed due to the fact that municipal resources had to be reassigned due to other more pressing issues. Concurrently with the implementation of SARs, the design of the REV needed to be finalized, calls for tenders issued and the REV completed (inauguration in October). Indeed, an enormous amount of work was done internally to get the project off the ground. However, in doing so, temporary urbanism (SARs) combined with regular urbanism (REV) promoted cycling practices among Montreal populations. Although this particular achievement allowed the Mayor to confirm her leadership in the area of active mobility, it in no way provided her with carte blanche to develop other cycling infrastructures. It did not mark a major turning point in favour of cycling either. In fact, in May 2022, a number of critics raised the issue of the limitations of the Bike Plan’s 2022 budget, namely 17 million dollars or approximately 3% of the overall municipal budget.

Lastly, this case study raises the issue of the long-term impact of the temporary urbanism. Indeed, from the City’s point of view, the lessons learned from it are expected to feed the process of the first Urbanism and Mobility Plan, which will be adopted in 2023. In this perspective, the temporary urbanism (2020–21), perpetuated by the three-year seasonal pedestrianization programme (in 2022) can be seen as the premise of a transitory urbanism, as defined at the beginning of this chapter. Such an urbanism allows for testing and prefiguring future uses in a location or site to be updated. It also promotes the long-term transformation of spaces through successive phases with a view to creating new sustainable facilities. Nevertheless, the attention given to transitory urbanism should not overshadow other important issues which quickly became apparent during the pandemic—such as the public transport crisis. All while being considered important levers in Montreal’s ecological transition, TCs are currently experiencing an unprecedented crisis in terms of ridership dropfall, resulting in major financial issues.