Quote:
Originally Posted by paulwillyjean
The city of Montréal never approved the project. It was approved by Ville Mont-Royal, which as a demerged city, has complete jurisdiction on the development of its territory. By all means, there's very little the city can do to block this project. This being said, they're still discussing with the promoter to find ways to improve the project and reduce its negative impacts. That's how the residential phase came about (it wasn't in the original plans). As for cemeteries, living next to them shouldn't be a problem. There are tons of those in the middle of residential areas in Montreal. The two cemeteries that surround Sauvé station and the Notre-Dame-des-Neige cemetery close to Université de Montréal are great examples of urban cemeteries in the city.
|
It's outrageous that one city approves a project that's going to have another city bearing all of the burdens of supporting it. The project might be located in TMR but all of the roads, subway, buses that's going to bring all the stuff and people to that project are all located in the city of Montreal, all of their water, sewer are all provided to them by the city of Montreal. And they are making it worse by adding a residential component, exacerbating the traffic congestion problem further? LOL
Yes it's common to live right beside cemeteries but usually in quiet peaceful dwellings or buildings, either single-family housing neighbourhoods like Outremont, at most low-rise buildings on the other side of huge streets of the cemetery like in Côte-des-Neiges, or scholarly buildings like in Université de Montréal's case but never with high-density 6000 unit high-rise buildings with 15K people, hustling and bustling and then with huge rowdy water parks entertainment centres right beside. Forget about in reverence to the dead and respect for the deceased, has anybody looked at the potential damage to the burial structure in the cemetery and the health risk to the people who will be living and/or working and shopping right beside from potentially disturbing the buried remains? With building such a substantial project that includes both commercial and residential that requires digging deep into the ground for the foundation of the buildings? And with the possibility of bacteria, bacteria that we might not even have cures for being able to stay alive in corpses for thousands of years, wouldn't this be tremendous health risk should those dangerous bacteria from the disturbed buried remains due to the construction process contaminate the soil and/or seep through to the groundwater infrastructure? Psychological factors aside, although I stand to be corrected, this to me are major risks that should be examined further before actually permitting the construction for such a project to go ahead. There is a reason behind the saying "Rest in Peace" and the surrounding environment around burial places are to remain quiet and peaceful and even somber.
I don't know. I don't see this project succeeding. You don't create a "city centre" by just constructing clusters of buildings that are arbitrary to its surrounding environment no matter how "eco-friendly" you advertise it to be. A very good example of it is the North York City Centre that Toronto's former mayor Mel Lastman (that mayor that called in the Canadian Army to help out with that winter storm in Toronto, yes that's the one) tried to create a city centre by constructing a whole bunch of buildings even with a subway station in northern of the city very much like this Royalmount project thinking that would entice people to go there and transform it into a hub, a "city centre". It never did. It has a bit of activity during weekday mornings when people work there but once people finish work there, the whole area becomes empty. You hardly see anybody hanging around there during weekends. I fear this project that is costing so much to build might meet the same fate, meantime creating all those congestion for nothing. You cannot tell people where they want to live and hang out. You have to let people decide first naturally where they want to congregate and then you see the needs then you build the facilities and the structure to support it. City centres have to form organically and naturally.
Anyway, we shall see.