![]() So, hold on tight, get ready for a whole lot of numbers and a bumpy ride through the hidden scenes of Montreal’s construction frenzy.ġ _ Context: Increasing inaccessibility and a discrepant justification For this we will dive into Montreal’s current struggle to provide affordable housing to its citizens and into the justification given by analysts then we will look into the actors behind Maestria,their interests, and why luxury projects like Maestria are primarily designed to generate financial returns rather than provide homes for Montrealers. Through a specific case study – the development of the 60-story Maestria Condominiums project – we will see how the backstories of real estate projects have defining effects on their form and their repercussions on the rest of the city. The following article aims to expose the financialization of land in Montreal and its tangible repercussions. How is it that our cities are increasingly unaffordable despite a growing supply of residential units? This incongruity points to the following possibility: could it be that the main function of our era’s massive residential projects isn’t to actually house people? What if these projects were instead the physical form of financial mechanisms, built to produce financial returns before anything else? It also doesn’t take an expert to see it is becoming more and more difficult to live in any major city in Canada, with rents and selling prices on steep upward curves that show no signs of slowing. Whether in central districts or in gentrifying peripheral neighbourhoods, construction crews are practically everywhere. Everyone seems to have their own take on the subject, as well as their own scapegoats of preference – foreign buyers, immigrants, government interference, yuppies, Airbnb, … Banking on a simple logic of supply and demand, an often-touted solution to housing unaffordability is to simply build more housing.Īnd it doesn’t take a trained eye to tell that Montreal is currently under a great deal of construction. Like in many other Canadian cities, land value in Montreal has risen steadily through the last twenty years while incomes have stagnated 2. This however doesn’t prevent it from being a powerful force in shaping our daily lives, without us even knowing it. Finance operates invisibly within the abstracted realm of speculative money, most of which never actually materializes into hard cash. Generally, any talk of derivatives, assets, liquidity, bonds and interest rates is likely a quick route to a shortened attention span, if not utter confusion. Part of the reason why is simply that the scope of finance is so darn hard to fully understand. ![]() Still, most people (understandably) live their lives unconcerned by what stock just went up or down or what Warren Buffet had for lunch that day. This is slowly changing however, due in part to the rise of cryptocurrencies and retail traders, as we’ve seen in recent years with the advent of Bitcoin and the Wall Street Bets fiasco 1. Traditionally, the world of finance has belonged to an exclusive class of traders, banks, corporations and government, isolating it to the upper echelons of society. In order to bring these questions to light, Shock Value projected a visual piece onto the sales office of Maestria Condominiums on May 29 2021. Who exactly are these towers for? Who is building them? Who -or what- defines the landscape of our city? Whose city is it? Meanwhile, this kind of urban development is changing the shape of our city. ![]() It appears that economists have been wrong: condo towers won’t solve the housing crisis. Downtown Montreal is especially active, as numerous mega-projects break ground, such as 1 Square Phillips, Victoria sur le Parc, Solstice Montreal, Le Quinze-Cent and Maestria Condominiums. Meanwhile, Montreal is witnessing a period of unprecedented residential construction. Each new year marks a steeper increase in rents and purchasing prices. The housing crisis in Montreal is no secret, but the processes behind it are shrouded within the obscure world of finance and speculation. ![]()
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