Mixed use urban planning
For the moment, I'm staying in Montreal, and have amused myself by going on strolls through her streets whenever I can escape my meeting. Today I decided to head east on Rue Catherine, hoping to find a good cafe in the Quartier Latin. Instead, I ended up walking through several blocks worth of sex shops and peep shows, which seem to be metastasizing up and down Rue Catherine. Two things about this puzzled me. First, where do the students at QUAM go to hang out and get a coffee? Second, how in the world do everyday people, from little children to gray-haired ladies, walk so nonchalently down the street? In the United States, even being seen on such a street would be scandalous, but here it's all rather routine.
I've seen this latter phenomenon before, on my way up to Montmatre and Sacre Coeur, still my favorite spot in Paris. The most convenient metro stop lets one at at Pigalle, which dwarfs Rue Catherine in size. Oddly though, the same attitude of banal normality is also present, with plenty of T-shirt stands and nice bistros. There's something different culturally between these places and U.S. cities, which must explain the difference. One possibility is that French (and thus Quebec) culture tends to be less prudish about sex. Somehow, I don't think this is it though. There also seems to be some general acceptance in France of the ability of fairly discordant images and cultures to pass on the street, without really affecting each other. In urban planning, this has translated to neighborhoods with a huge variety of commercial businesses. When adult stores occur, they are usually mixed in with other businesses. The U.S., on the other hand, has chosen to limit such stores to a few select locations, making those zones of the city too seedy and dangerous for any other stores to relocate to.
