Officials and thinkers from all over came together to brainstorm with Montrealers on how to go about reigning in decades of sprawl. A new Quebec law requires the city to come up with a land use plan by next year.
Columnist Henry Aubin was impressed by the turnout, and saw it as an indication that apathy on land use issues had gone away and people were truly engaged:
"This is unprecedented. Public apathy has until now been the rule. The Parti Quebecois government's creation of the Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal -- its mandate was to bring order to chaotic development -- attracted little attention. And the CMM's failure to produce a land-use plan by the end of 2005, as required by provincial law, caused no outcry."
Aubin was intrigued by a presentation by Michael Burton of Portland, Oregon, who explained how Portland's regional form of government helped shape the land use pattern of that metropolitan area.
Aubin writes, "I don't think Quebec has the gumption to set up such a body here, but it would make great sense."
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