the restriction on number of doors is basically used to 1) limit density 2) limit supply of housing 3) increase current housing prices for the current owneri n the said nuighborhood. 4) contribute to urban sprawl 5) contribute to lack of affordable housing 6) increase carbon emission from building more housing and longer commute basically number of doors matter a lot!
Or you just use one single house door for whatever number of rented flats like everyone does here in good ol' Europe. 12 families can use the same door without trying to kill each other, I swear!!
@@steemlenn8797 It's probably cheaper too but personally, I like the aesthetic of multiple doors these types of units provide. It gives each resident their own character and privacy in a setting where that tends to be an oversight because of it being a multifamily housing unit
I'm genuinely curious about the cities that the people that demand these sorts of regulations would point to as case studies of 'disorganized' or 'messy' neighborhoods. Like, if you demand conformity for everything from setbacks to doors, there must be some *sort* of counterfactual that these people could point to, right? Like, "see? You don't want to be like _____" As someone that consciously moved away from America to escape the automobile-heavy suburban lifestyle, I'll admit that I'm biased. But I genuinely cannot fathom the other side of the argument.
It probably originated out of "there goes the neighborhood" fears. I'd love to see the channel look into when these specific zoning laws were passed, who supported them and what reasons were stated at the time.
4:02 “If you want to ban or restrict something, you should have to look to places where that thing is not banned and seriously ask whether it's a problem there.” Well said!
As a Torontonian, Toronto city council can be really annoying and overly restrictive sometimes. They just voted to ban eScooters because they listened to testimony from people who said they were worried about being hit by them, yet they bend over backwards for cars even when pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists are constantly killed by drivers. They're very protective of the status-quo.
My duplex (in an upper Midwest US city, and built in 1900) has two doors. The downstairs flat door opens to a small vestibule, then the living room. The upstairs flat (mine) opens to a stair hall. There's a generous landing at the top, then another entry door into the flat itself. The stair hall is used only by the upper flat. I use it as an entry / mud room, with a bench and coat rack. It's a good setup, and I'm quite happy not to share indoor space with the downstairs people.
The comment about how the law is just codifying the idea of renting as being "shameful" is spot on. People just want to hide the fact that not everyone can afford (or wants) their own detached house. It's against the "neighbourhood aesthetic" of everyone being wealthy. Our culture needs to stop trying to get rid of inequality by sweeping out of sight.
Lol that is the most absurd and random-ass municipal law I’ve ever heard. As an anglo-Quebecer and Montrealer, I literally don’t understand the rest of the anglo sphere sometimes 😂
I think i do: it is the local council putting in laws that are designed to make housing expensive, sometimes because they & their friends are invested in it, i guess. The solution is to vote in the local council elections.
@@879PC post war north American suburbs, excluding Montreal, are some of the worst suburbs in the world and not just the developed world. they are ugly, inefficient, and extremely harmful to the environment. so its not just people from Quebec who don't understand you, the entire world doesn't understand how city planners and law makers can be so incompetent to bulldoze some of the best cities in the world and turn it into car infested wastelands that bankrupt your country.
@@hsein3838 Thank you for this lol. Of course there are suburbs like you are referring to in Greater Montreal as well so I won't act all righteous and stuff, but you are 100% right most of the rest of the developed planet no matter what language they speak did a better job of planning.
Even as a European haven't seen so many front doors ever then in this video. Glad that montreal is so much different then vancouver or Toronto While some building with the 4 garages 3:50 look like an eyesore for me as an European i think that they serve northamerican requirements for up to two cars very well even for lower middel class housing.
T.o. and this policy just enforce the idea of the city as being super uptight. I mean isn't there something more important than the sight of multiple doors? Even the townhouses in the expensive burbs of Brossard and st. Lambert have multiple doors and it hasn't effected property values. they're actually some of the highest tax brackets in QC
I'm so curious about the entry/stairs situation here. How does it work? each front door has its own entry hall and staircase? Is it more space saving than a common front door and common entry hall and staircase? The external straicases are really pretty, they add such character, and having a "front porch" on the second floor is really nice, compared to regular residential buildings whiwh don't offer exterior spaces to second and third floor appartements.
There are lots of different configurations, but here are a few basic ones. The building on this corner is a simple two level duplex, one unit on each floor, which has two ground-level doors. The door on the left goes directly to the bottom floor unit, and the door on the right goes directly into an internal staircase to the second floor unit. www.google.com/maps/@45.5224074,-73.5849921,3a,75y,12.67h,93.83t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1se_ws7xc4IxBZUwesOC6GEQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 Go a few buildings over and you have another duplex except now you access the second floor unit by an external staircase. This saves space mainly because both buildings have the same setback from the street but this one doesn't have to take up space inside with the internal staircase. (In other words, external staircases mainly save space by using the setback room.) www.google.com/maps/@45.5225403,-73.5852965,3a,71.8y,25.04h,92.88t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shQ_m9-Gj6616LCSHgOaMvg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 One building to the left of that and you have a triplex, with one more unit on a new third floor. This is the same as the second duplex except that there are two doors on the second floor staircase, and the left one goes to an internal staircase to reach the third floor. www.google.com/maps/@45.5225868,-73.5853968,3a,75y,36.47h,100.05t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1snMLSAXM5IzK0JR4b3wiQGw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 The residence in the thumbnail is less typical but the building is divided into four units (top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right). The furthest left and right doors likely each open directly into the two first floor units, while the two middle doors go to two separate internal staircases to reach the two second floor units. (Another configuration of this building might have the two middle doors combined so that the two upper floor units share the internal staircase.) www.google.com/maps/@45.5221646,-73.5861136,3a,75y,30.32h,89.44t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9RojDKNJP8wkwtfQYwGGSg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
One reason that older buildings often had staircases on the outside was so that they didn't have to heat the space taken by an interior staircase during Montreal's harsh winters.
I love my Montreal apartment with a front and back door. It’s almost a hundred years old yet I have my own washer and dryer hookups. It has all the advantages of a house without some of the disadvantages of most apartments. Those spiral staircases aren’t as dangerous as they look because the snow melts faster on them than on wooden or concrete stairs (they’re made of metal, have perforations and are often painted black). But they’re hell on moving day.
Yes n No... Restrctiins of pulling down buildings of heritage is a good thing and badly done conversions of buildings (eg offices to housing) can look horrendous..
It looks weird having two or three in a row. Here in Edinburgh Scotland an affluent neighborhood might have one front door for the ground level apartment (often called a 'main door flat'), another front door leading to a communal stair to all the apartments on the higher floors, and a basement apartment with its own external stair and front door.
it's just the style. it's something you get used to. I lived in Edinburgh (in Newington, Tollcross and Bruntsfield) for 5 years, and the main difference is that the temperature isn't as extreme - Edinburgh ranges from +25 to -5 degrees, whereas Montreal ranges from +40 to -40. buildings with just one communal entry and internal staircases are pretty common in Mtl too, but the difference is that that these buildings are generally newer (post-WWII) than the ones you're talking about in Edinburgh, and their internal staircase has to be heated in the winter.
Great video ! As always...! I suddenly wondered if you ever get stopped by people asking why you film their homes, haha. I will admit that having somebody in front of my building filming it would make me raise my eyebrows...!
Thanks! We've had people passing by ask about the camera/gimbal or the bikes, but we haven't had any residents ask about filming of the buildings. However, we do avoid filming if there's a resident visible to avoid connecting any person with an address, even though it sometimes results in the shots looking less lively than they would in real life.
"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another door. This door is another dimension. A dimension of sound... a dimension of imagination... a dimension of doors."
Sharing a front door is also a security risk! If you have your own door, you don't have to worry about your neighbor leaving the door unlocked, hanging open, or losing their keys (or otherwise having them compromised). Additionally, if for any other reason somebody does break in, it limits the damage and also physical risk to those living there.
I'm not sure I follow the security argument. You have a lock on your flat's door either way -- the only difference is whether that door leads into a hallway/stairwell with another lockable door at the exit, or straight outside. Surely having two lockable doors between your flat and the outside is safer than having one, even if other tenants may sometimes leave the front door unlocked?
The Davenport-Christie building looks neat. The fact than you can have a smaller home plus a garage is great. You can store your car inside and not in the street and it's (personally) great when you just want to have a little workshop to work your projects. If there is good noise isolation, this type of building is a respectable middle ground between a single family house and an appartment building.
I have to admit, as a German where generally everyone goes into the same one front door, having 3 or 4 doors, especailly on the second floor, looks awfully strange. Like "drunken architect" strange.
In my country different tenants & owners of the same house often share the same entrance, living room, kitchen & bathrooms; the only part they have to themselves are the bedrooms. Though we also have shophouses where the ground floor unit is typically a shop & the're 1 or 2 floors of units above either as an expansion of the shop, an apartment of office, & they're accessed by a common staircase on the side & perpendicular to the shopfront, either from the front or the back (via a back alley). If there're >1 floor above the ground floor unit you walk up halfway along the staircase's length to reach the 2nd floor unit's entrance, or you can walk further all the way to the other end of the staircase to the 3rd floor
Very interesting and well argued point, mainly when considering new developments, where the multiple accesses could be perfectly integrated with regard to safety as well as style/aesthetics. Great channel, for someone who lives in Germany, you offer such an insightful perspective on housing in Canada and do go deep in your considerations without being too complicated for a layman. Thanks for your content!
@@coastaku1954 yup, just like Paris, Prague and those other stagnant cities, they should allow for more regular replacement of those old neighborhoods with skycrapers and shopping malls. Would make those cities look so much newer.
I am not so sure that having additional doors for seperate units at the side of a traditional looking single family home is such a terrible thing... I think banning multi unit complexes is more of a thing to worry about.
Happy to hear! Most of the Montreal shots in this video were from Outremont and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, with a few from the Plateau too. The first shot at 3:55 is Ave Aird in HoMa: www.google.com/maps/@45.5535129,-73.5311046,3a,75y,225.8h,97.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssXa1nbh-L3BwTpdWhqRmlQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 The second shot at 4:01 is Rue Saint-Clément, also in HoMa: www.google.com/maps/@45.557005,-73.5313483,3a,70.5y,207.32h,84.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sdnSMyYJGSOnuxUja7BX1lQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 The third shot at 4:08 is Ave Saint-Cyril in Outremont: www.google.com/maps/@45.5209795,-73.6156008,3a,75y,115.16h,97.25t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPVg-mteMJXrFtg1WUx4jTg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
My only complaint out of all of those is the multiple ground floor doors for what obviously are upstairs apartments examples. Staircases are, except for getting from floor to floor, really unusable space. I'd much rather see either a balcony with doors (I saw a couple of those in there) or a shared internal staircase with doors at the top.
That neighborhoods in Montreal are so idyllic. Living in the Netherlands, we build mostly terraced houses, but in very boring way. But maybe because most of them were build the last 80 years.
One of the town-houses I lived in had been renovated to turn the basement into a separate apartment to be able to extract even more profit than renting the whole thing as a single unit. Part of that renovation was to add a second door beside the original one so that the person living in the basement could come and go _without having to go through the home of strangers in the top-unit_ or having to _carve out a chunk of the top unit to create a common hallway._ It's just basic logic. Character schmaracter. 🙄 It also makes the entrances/exits more straightforward and practical than having to make them snake around a tight corner hallway that prevents being able to move furniture in and out, let alone all of the SAFETY considerations of evacuation in an emergency. The government can stuff its "feel" deep in its digestive tract. 😒 3:37 Why does Rogers try to obscure their trucks' branding? People still know their red trucks when they see them and hate them just the same whether the text is visible or not. 🙄 4:14 I'll never get over the ubiquity of upper-floor stair'd front-doors in Montréal. I've seen such things many times everywhere, but seeing them on the front of the building is less common than on the side.
I can't agree... We have "conservation" areas in the UK where traditional attractive houses/streets can't be changed.. One generally isn't allowed to change the type of doors and definitely not shape of windows (new will be allowed but they must be the same design eg sash or leaded or whatever). This imposed uniformity does look a lot nicer than the same type of housing in non conservation areas where people may have extended into the roof or side. , knocked out bay windows, painted/covered brickwork or turned the front garden into parking...
Makes you wonder whether you can have a fake extra front door, if you live in a one front-door city. Seriously: If you live in a half- duplex house, what do you do if you change it to full duplex: Can you leave in the unused door? Replace it with a door-shaped piece of wood? Brick it up completely? The building was built with two doors in its architecture, so destroying one door might seriously spoil the esthetics.
Illuminating bit by bit the effect our urban planning choices have on our environment. This is as important to general education as learning about earth climates and geometry and women's suffrage. Please keep these coming until all the GTA feels designed for humans.
Ive been watching a lot of "walking tour" style videos of Tokyo, Japan lately. Could you do a video looking at how zoning laws are there, and if that's why we see so much retail shops on every corner?
Is the real state value worst in toronto homes with multiple door vs neighbooring homes with single doors? That would have been a nice info to the vid, and a good point if the awnser was no.
@@OhTheUrbanity I grew up in Ottawa, its not for me personally. My parents live there , I lived 7 years in Montréal . Its a good city for north America , My sister lived in Toronto and Vancouver , now she is back in Ottawa for work and to send more time with my parents. I been all over Canada Montréal is really the more life size city in Canada . I am lucky to have lived Copenhagen and Malmö now . There is so much work to do to make city's more liveable for future generations. thank for making these great videos so that one day there can be liveable cities in the future in Canada and Québec. :)
I would think if any Doors would present a problem it would be Jim Morrison's and not those we find in Montreal lol. My statement is as ridiculous as the law.
If any kind of Doors would attract loudness and drugs, it would be Jim Morrison. One time my parents were getting their front door replaced so they told me "the guy with the doors is here." "Jim Morrison?" I answered with a straight face. "No actually his last name is- oh very funny"
What I find strange about this kind of parking lots is that yes you could park 8 cars, but if you do that you can only use the 2 in the front. It's just such a strange design choice, to waste so much space and at the same time limit the usability so drastically.
@@goldenretriever6261 I am not arguing against a big driveway. I am arguing against the way the driveways are build - Long and narrow. That just doesn't make any sense if you have limited space.
Eh? Semi detached homes don't have 2 front doors, they have 1 door per home! I lived in a semi-detached home for the latter part of my childhood and I never ever thought of the other half of the building being part of the same house as ours - though, in the UK the style of semi detached house is very different, with separate, distinct drives and doors that are placed roughly in the centre of each house, rather than central to the building as a whole. But also, I lived in terrace homes before we moved to a semi-detached suburb. Going by the definition expressed in this video, a row of terraces must surely be considered as a single "house" with sometimes several DOZEN front doors. It's a lot of fun to imagine the silly floorplans that might result from a terrace row being held to the same "one front door" code (actually I guess it'd most likely just be an internal corridor like with an hotel).
You're technically right, but it's just easy to think of a semi-detached home as being one building with two units while a row house feels more like many buildings attached.
@@OhTheUrbanity Thanks very much for the answer! I guess it makes sense, I've just never thought about my parents' semi detached house as being one half of a larger building before, and somehow it feels very strange to think of it like that.
Duplexes are often banned for reasons, bad reasons, but reasons. 1)allowing them could make housing more affordable to more people, other people -poor people, and what some in the us call "Urban" people. 2) it could increase availability of housing, which intern could reduce renting prices as the cost of living will not be as inflated by artificial scarcity. 3) its different and therefore wrong.
multiple (4 or more) front doors just seem so ridiculous to me. with many of those examples, you'll have the exact same staircase multiple times, just halfed in width, rather than one shared staircase for all flats
Of course a shared entrance is more efficient use of space, but is it ridiculous to suggest that most people prefer a private entrance to their own apartments?
I want to have my own entrance door. I love chaotic straicases in Montreal for each door. I don't know what "urban science" says about it. may be it says that it is bad and we should destroy it, because the whole modern urban scince is about "how to make everything more EFFICEINT!!! You hate it? Doesn't matter, because IT'S EFFICIENT!!!".
An examination of the history of single family zoning and separation of uses through zoning cannot be considered without acknowledging that it was used implicitly and explicitly to keep black and brown people and the less affluent out of white neighborhoods. I don't know about the history of housing in Canada and how explicitly racial segregation was a factor in how it developed. Seems like a ploy to discourage building of multi-tenant housing and to keep houses unaffordable. In US/Canada houses are primary sources of wealth creation and people vote with their property values. Seems too akin to servant's entrances needing to be hidden away... Adequate housing is a human right..
Sorry guys, but these multiple front doors don't look fine in Montreal either. It is certainly a minor issue and one that would be questonable to regulate, but still the examples in the video look pretty ugly to me.
That all looks nice, I'm just worried about going to Montreal since I'm from Toronto that I'll be discriminated against cause I happen to be from Toronto and how much the Quebecois hate Ontarians and English Speakers, I've experienced this first hand at La Ronde's front gate and shops around Montreal where I am treated less cause I speak english and are from Ontario
While you'll find bad apples everywhere, we didn't have the experience of being treated poorly at all. We've found that if you're friendly and make an effort to meet people where they're coming from, it all works out. With that said, we moved to Montreal with a particular interest in developing our French speaking and we already knew we loved the city. (One of us is from Waterloo and one of us from Halifax area originally).
@@OhTheUrbanity I do find that Quebecois are more rude and arrogant than Ontarians, but that's hardly saying anything cause here in, say, Mississauga, people drive very selfishly and are territorial
I was born in Montreal but whenever I have returned to visit I have noticed incidences of such hostility where before there were none. As well, you can now encounter retail staff who can't speak English. If I was an American tourist I wouldn't return for any reason.
What a mean and unfair comment to claim we all hate whole categories of people. I'm sorry anyone ever has a negative experience in my city. Yet, I never go to Toronto and insist everyone must serve me in French... How do you think they'd treat me if I did, though?
@@jeandanielodonnncada I just think that cause a majority of Canada speaks english and Montreal claims to be a bilingual city that I should at least expect a bit of english service. I do want to go back to Montreal since I have a weird guilty pleasure for that city even if I can't read the signs, it's still pretty cool that we have a section of Canada only a 6 hour train away that is completely different from home.
the restriction on number of doors is basically used to
1) limit density
2) limit supply of housing
3) increase current housing prices for the current owneri n the said nuighborhood.
4) contribute to urban sprawl
5) contribute to lack of affordable housing
6) increase carbon emission from building more housing and longer commute
basically number of doors matter a lot!
Or you just use one single house door for whatever number of rented flats like everyone does here in good ol' Europe. 12 families can use the same door without trying to kill each other, I swear!!
@@steemlenn8797 It's probably cheaper too but personally, I like the aesthetic of multiple doors these types of units provide. It gives each resident their own character and privacy in a setting where that tends to be an oversight because of it being a multifamily housing unit
I'm genuinely curious about the cities that the people that demand these sorts of regulations would point to as case studies of 'disorganized' or 'messy' neighborhoods. Like, if you demand conformity for everything from setbacks to doors, there must be some *sort* of counterfactual that these people could point to, right? Like, "see? You don't want to be like _____"
As someone that consciously moved away from America to escape the automobile-heavy suburban lifestyle, I'll admit that I'm biased. But I genuinely cannot fathom the other side of the argument.
I guess it looks cleaner, plus many of the older, denser neighbourhoods look a bit dumpy
It probably originated out of "there goes the neighborhood" fears.
I'd love to see the channel look into when these specific zoning laws were passed, who supported them and what reasons were stated at the time.
@@coastaku1954 I take "dumpy" (did you want to say "not sterile"?) Over "not able to pay for roads, water and other infrastructure " any day.
I am happy I left Canada as well . But if I have to go back to north America
Montréal is the best option.
@@m.p.baldnessdyslexic88 Why are you happy to leave Canada? Canada is a lovely place
Such a random but interesting topic! Enjoyed this one. And beautiful drone shots
4:02 “If you want to ban or restrict something, you should have to look to places where that thing is not banned and seriously ask whether it's a problem there.” Well said!
As a Torontonian, Toronto city council can be really annoying and overly restrictive sometimes. They just voted to ban eScooters because they listened to testimony from people who said they were worried about being hit by them, yet they bend over backwards for cars even when pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists are constantly killed by drivers. They're very protective of the status-quo.
To be fair, escooters are the worst of all modes, possibly even worse than cars, but I wont fight over that one.
My duplex (in an upper Midwest US city, and built in 1900) has two doors.
The downstairs flat door opens to a small vestibule, then the living room.
The upstairs flat (mine) opens to a stair hall. There's a generous landing at the top, then another entry door into the flat itself. The stair hall is used only by the upper flat. I use it as an entry / mud room, with a bench and coat rack.
It's a good setup, and I'm quite happy not to share indoor space with the downstairs people.
The comment about how the law is just codifying the idea of renting as being "shameful" is spot on. People just want to hide the fact that not everyone can afford (or wants) their own detached house. It's against the "neighbourhood aesthetic" of everyone being wealthy. Our culture needs to stop trying to get rid of inequality by sweeping out of sight.
This is bizarre and so interesting. Toronto's policy on this strikes me as overreach, definitely! Tyrannical? quite possibly.
Toronto and Montreal shouldn't be so different.
Any of those 2 front houses can be in any of those cities
Bureaucrats justify their existence by saying "no". Besides, it's Toronto the densest population of pearl clutching ninnies in Canada.
It's all about property value disguised as culture "necessities"
Lol that is the most absurd and random-ass municipal law I’ve ever heard. As an anglo-Quebecer and Montrealer, I literally don’t understand the rest of the anglo sphere sometimes 😂
And the rest of us in the anglosphere don't understand you.
I think i do: it is the local council putting in laws that are designed to make housing expensive, sometimes because they & their friends are invested in it, i guess.
The solution is to vote in the local council elections.
@@879PC post war north American suburbs, excluding Montreal, are some of the worst suburbs in the world and not just the developed world. they are ugly, inefficient, and extremely harmful to the environment. so its not just people from Quebec who don't understand you, the entire world doesn't understand how city planners and law makers can be so incompetent to bulldoze some of the best cities in the world and turn it into car infested wastelands that bankrupt your country.
@@pebblepod30 Very very good point.
@@hsein3838 Thank you for this lol. Of course there are suburbs like you are referring to in Greater Montreal as well so I won't act all righteous and stuff, but you are 100% right most of the rest of the developed planet no matter what language they speak did a better job of planning.
Even as a European haven't seen so many front doors ever then in this video.
Glad that montreal is so much different then vancouver or Toronto
While some building with the 4 garages 3:50 look like an eyesore for me as an European i think that they serve northamerican requirements for up to two cars very well even for lower middel class housing.
"Stability, character, and aesthetic" = Not In My BackYard
Front Yard, if you can even call it a yard. NIMFW - not in my front wall
T.o. and this policy just enforce the idea of the city as being super uptight. I mean isn't there something more important than the sight of multiple doors? Even the townhouses in the expensive burbs of Brossard and st. Lambert have multiple doors and it hasn't effected property values. they're actually some of the highest tax brackets in QC
I'm so curious about the entry/stairs situation here. How does it work? each front door has its own entry hall and staircase? Is it more space saving than a common front door and common entry hall and staircase? The external straicases are really pretty, they add such character, and having a "front porch" on the second floor is really nice, compared to regular residential buildings whiwh don't offer exterior spaces to second and third floor appartements.
There are lots of different configurations, but here are a few basic ones. The building on this corner is a simple two level duplex, one unit on each floor, which has two ground-level doors. The door on the left goes directly to the bottom floor unit, and the door on the right goes directly into an internal staircase to the second floor unit.
www.google.com/maps/@45.5224074,-73.5849921,3a,75y,12.67h,93.83t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1se_ws7xc4IxBZUwesOC6GEQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
Go a few buildings over and you have another duplex except now you access the second floor unit by an external staircase. This saves space mainly because both buildings have the same setback from the street but this one doesn't have to take up space inside with the internal staircase. (In other words, external staircases mainly save space by using the setback room.)
www.google.com/maps/@45.5225403,-73.5852965,3a,71.8y,25.04h,92.88t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shQ_m9-Gj6616LCSHgOaMvg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
One building to the left of that and you have a triplex, with one more unit on a new third floor. This is the same as the second duplex except that there are two doors on the second floor staircase, and the left one goes to an internal staircase to reach the third floor.
www.google.com/maps/@45.5225868,-73.5853968,3a,75y,36.47h,100.05t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1snMLSAXM5IzK0JR4b3wiQGw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
The residence in the thumbnail is less typical but the building is divided into four units (top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right). The furthest left and right doors likely each open directly into the two first floor units, while the two middle doors go to two separate internal staircases to reach the two second floor units. (Another configuration of this building might have the two middle doors combined so that the two upper floor units share the internal staircase.)
www.google.com/maps/@45.5221646,-73.5861136,3a,75y,30.32h,89.44t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9RojDKNJP8wkwtfQYwGGSg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
One reason that older buildings often had staircases on the outside was so that they didn't have to heat the space taken by an interior staircase during Montreal's harsh winters.
I love my Montreal apartment with a front and back door. It’s almost a hundred years old yet I have my own washer and dryer hookups. It has all the advantages of a house without some of the disadvantages of most apartments. Those spiral staircases aren’t as dangerous as they look because the snow melts faster on them than on wooden or concrete stairs (they’re made of metal, have perforations and are often painted black). But they’re hell on moving day.
Overly restrictive building codes regarding aesthetics are one of the biggest low key things destroying our cities. Great video!
Yes n No... Restrctiins of pulling down buildings of heritage is a good thing and badly done conversions of buildings (eg offices to housing) can look horrendous..
It looks weird having two or three in a row. Here in Edinburgh Scotland an affluent neighborhood might have one front door for the ground level apartment (often called a 'main door flat'), another front door leading to a communal stair to all the apartments on the higher floors, and a basement apartment with its own external stair and front door.
it's just the style. it's something you get used to.
I lived in Edinburgh (in Newington, Tollcross and Bruntsfield) for 5 years, and the main difference is that the temperature isn't as extreme - Edinburgh ranges from +25 to -5 degrees, whereas Montreal ranges from +40 to -40. buildings with just one communal entry and internal staircases are pretty common in Mtl too, but the difference is that that these buildings are generally newer (post-WWII) than the ones you're talking about in Edinburgh, and their internal staircase has to be heated in the winter.
Great video ! As always...!
I suddenly wondered if you ever get stopped by people asking why you film their homes, haha. I will admit that having somebody in front of my building filming it would make me raise my eyebrows...!
Thanks! We've had people passing by ask about the camera/gimbal or the bikes, but we haven't had any residents ask about filming of the buildings. However, we do avoid filming if there's a resident visible to avoid connecting any person with an address, even though it sometimes results in the shots looking less lively than they would in real life.
"You unlock this door with the key of imagination.
Beyond it is another door.
This door is another dimension.
A dimension of sound... a dimension of imagination... a dimension of doors."
Great video as always guys! Please keep em' coming :)
Thanks! Will do!
Sharing a front door is also a security risk! If you have your own door, you don't have to worry about your neighbor leaving the door unlocked, hanging open, or losing their keys (or otherwise having them compromised). Additionally, if for any other reason somebody does break in, it limits the damage and also physical risk to those living there.
I'm not sure I follow the security argument.
You have a lock on your flat's door either way -- the only difference is whether that door leads into a hallway/stairwell with another lockable door at the exit, or straight outside. Surely having two lockable doors between your flat and the outside is safer than having one, even if other tenants may sometimes leave the front door unlocked?
The Davenport-Christie building looks neat. The fact than you can have a smaller home plus a garage is great. You can store your car inside and not in the street and it's (personally) great when you just want to have a little workshop to work your projects. If there is good noise isolation, this type of building is a respectable middle ground between a single family house and an appartment building.
I have to admit, as a German where generally everyone goes into the same one front door, having 3 or 4 doors, especailly on the second floor, looks awfully strange. Like "drunken architect" strange.
In my country different tenants & owners of the same house often share the same entrance, living room, kitchen & bathrooms; the only part they have to themselves are the bedrooms. Though we also have shophouses where the ground floor unit is typically a shop & the're 1 or 2 floors of units above either as an expansion of the shop, an apartment of office, & they're accessed by a common staircase on the side & perpendicular to the shopfront, either from the front or the back (via a back alley). If there're >1 floor above the ground floor unit you walk up halfway along the staircase's length to reach the 2nd floor unit's entrance, or you can walk further all the way to the other end of the staircase to the 3rd floor
Very interesting and well argued point, mainly when considering new developments, where the multiple accesses could be perfectly integrated with regard to safety as well as style/aesthetics.
Great channel, for someone who lives in Germany, you offer such an insightful perspective on housing in Canada and do go deep in your considerations without being too complicated for a layman.
Thanks for your content!
I like buildings with multiple doors. Makes it a fun challenge to imagine the internal layout.
Are the drone videos from Montréal yours? They look great !
Yeah! Thanks. We like views of the city so much that getting a drone was inevitable.
@@OhTheUrbanity I do think that Toronto has a nicer Skyline, plus it looks newer and is always changing, unlike Montreal which is a big stagnant
@@coastaku1954 yup, just like Paris, Prague and those other stagnant cities, they should allow for more regular replacement of those old neighborhoods with skycrapers and shopping malls. Would make those cities look so much newer.
I am not so sure that having additional doors for seperate units at the side of a traditional looking single family home is such a terrible thing... I think banning multi unit complexes is more of a thing to worry about.
I’m American and the number of front doors a building has is one thing that has never occurred to me in my life!
I really enjoyed the video, thank you. A quick question, what part of Montreal is being filmed between 3:55 and 4:17? Thank you.
Happy to hear! Most of the Montreal shots in this video were from Outremont and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, with a few from the Plateau too.
The first shot at 3:55 is Ave Aird in HoMa: www.google.com/maps/@45.5535129,-73.5311046,3a,75y,225.8h,97.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssXa1nbh-L3BwTpdWhqRmlQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
The second shot at 4:01 is Rue Saint-Clément, also in HoMa: www.google.com/maps/@45.557005,-73.5313483,3a,70.5y,207.32h,84.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sdnSMyYJGSOnuxUja7BX1lQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
The third shot at 4:08 is Ave Saint-Cyril in Outremont: www.google.com/maps/@45.5209795,-73.6156008,3a,75y,115.16h,97.25t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPVg-mteMJXrFtg1WUx4jTg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
@@OhTheUrbanity I appreciate you sharing! Keep up the great work.
My only complaint out of all of those is the multiple ground floor doors for what obviously are upstairs apartments examples. Staircases are, except for getting from floor to floor, really unusable space. I'd much rather see either a balcony with doors (I saw a couple of those in there) or a shared internal staircase with doors at the top.
In Montreal, some of them serve as pseudo mud rooms, which are very useful in the winters
That neighborhoods in Montreal are so idyllic. Living in the Netherlands, we build mostly terraced houses, but in very boring way. But maybe because most of them were build the last 80 years.
One of the town-houses I lived in had been renovated to turn the basement into a separate apartment to be able to extract even more profit than renting the whole thing as a single unit. Part of that renovation was to add a second door beside the original one so that the person living in the basement could come and go _without having to go through the home of strangers in the top-unit_ or having to _carve out a chunk of the top unit to create a common hallway._ It's just basic logic. Character schmaracter. 🙄
It also makes the entrances/exits more straightforward and practical than having to make them snake around a tight corner hallway that prevents being able to move furniture in and out, let alone all of the SAFETY considerations of evacuation in an emergency. The government can stuff its "feel" deep in its digestive tract. 😒
3:37 Why does Rogers try to obscure their trucks' branding? People still know their red trucks when they see them and hate them just the same whether the text is visible or not. 🙄
4:14 I'll never get over the ubiquity of upper-floor stair'd front-doors in Montréal. I've seen such things many times everywhere, but seeing them on the front of the building is less common than on the side.
I’m never gonna be able to walk down a city street and not look at doors now.
I absolutely abhor any legislation that is solely aimed at the aesthetics of peoples' personal property. It's ridiculous and unnecessary.
I can't agree... We have "conservation" areas in the UK where traditional attractive houses/streets can't be changed.. One generally isn't allowed to change the type of doors and definitely not shape of windows (new will be allowed but they must be the same design eg sash or leaded or whatever). This imposed uniformity does look a lot nicer than the same type of housing in non conservation areas where people may have extended into the roof or side. , knocked out bay windows, painted/covered brickwork or turned the front garden into parking...
Wow, I really like those outside-staircases...
Makes you wonder whether you can have a fake extra front door, if you live in a one front-door city.
Seriously: If you live in a half- duplex house, what do you do if you change it to full duplex: Can you leave in the unused door? Replace it with a door-shaped piece of wood? Brick it up completely? The building was built with two doors in its architecture, so destroying one door might seriously spoil the esthetics.
If on your tour of stores with doors you find one that has four score then give a roar and we'll be sure to have for you on hundred four.
Illuminating bit by bit the effect our urban planning choices have on our environment. This is as important to general education as learning about earth climates and geometry and women's suffrage. Please keep these coming until all the GTA feels designed for humans.
Oh hey I know someone who lives in that Davenport house. I went there to pick something up recently
Ive been watching a lot of "walking tour" style videos of Tokyo, Japan lately.
Could you do a video looking at how zoning laws are there, and if that's why we see so much retail shops on every corner?
In case you don't know, my favorite Toyko walking channel is Cory May ruclips.net/user/CoryMay81
Is the real state value worst in toronto homes with multiple door vs neighbooring homes with single doors? That would have been a nice info to the vid, and a good point if the awnser was no.
I have watched many of your videos , where what city is home at the moment ?
Ottawa!
@@OhTheUrbanity I grew up in Ottawa, its not for me personally. My parents live there , I lived 7 years in Montréal . Its a good city for north America , My sister lived in Toronto and Vancouver , now she is back in Ottawa for work and to send more time with my parents. I been all over Canada Montréal is really the more life size city in Canada . I am lucky to have lived Copenhagen and Malmö now . There is so much work to do to make city's more liveable for future generations. thank for making these great videos so that one day there can be liveable cities in the future in Canada and Québec. :)
I would think if any Doors would present a problem it would be Jim Morrison's and not those we find in Montreal lol. My statement is as ridiculous as the law.
If any kind of Doors would attract loudness and drugs, it would be Jim Morrison.
One time my parents were getting their front door replaced so they told me "the guy with the doors is here."
"Jim Morrison?" I answered with a straight face.
"No actually his last name is- oh very funny"
@@Knightmessenger 😂
It’s called shoveling the stairs in the winter lol!! 💚💚
Awesome video - so what do we do about it as citizens? Who do we write to? Which elected officials can be changed out?
You could park 8 cars on each of those lots at the start of the video.
In the parts where Indian immigrants live you will see 8 cars parked
What I find strange about this kind of parking lots is that yes you could park 8 cars, but if you do that you can only use the 2 in the front.
It's just such a strange design choice, to waste so much space and at the same time limit the usability so drastically.
@@Jehty_ Americans and Canadians want bigger everything. Cars houses driveways got to be as big as possible so your neighbors don't think you're poor.
@@goldenretriever6261 I am not arguing against a big driveway.
I am arguing against the way the driveways are build - Long and narrow. That just doesn't make any sense if you have limited space.
Eh? Semi detached homes don't have 2 front doors, they have 1 door per home! I lived in a semi-detached home for the latter part of my childhood and I never ever thought of the other half of the building being part of the same house as ours - though, in the UK the style of semi detached house is very different, with separate, distinct drives and doors that are placed roughly in the centre of each house, rather than central to the building as a whole.
But also, I lived in terrace homes before we moved to a semi-detached suburb. Going by the definition expressed in this video, a row of terraces must surely be considered as a single "house" with sometimes several DOZEN front doors. It's a lot of fun to imagine the silly floorplans that might result from a terrace row being held to the same "one front door" code (actually I guess it'd most likely just be an internal corridor like with an hotel).
You're technically right, but it's just easy to think of a semi-detached home as being one building with two units while a row house feels more like many buildings attached.
@@OhTheUrbanity Thanks very much for the answer! I guess it makes sense, I've just never thought about my parents' semi detached house as being one half of a larger building before, and somehow it feels very strange to think of it like that.
What does even "a severe problem with character" mean?
that's just absurd. Can I just add a window the size of a door? 😅
Internal layout of 2 doors is fine. But what about 4 doors?
Won't that have a hideous interior?
Width of just a door length sounds awful.
Does Toronto really not have any condominiums? Because those things have a ton of front doors.
Did you just say bike and subscribe? 😂
We certainly did!
Oooooh, snap snap snap, nice shade there for Toronto, Montréal! Although in this case, Toronto city council deserves every bit of it.
Me wanting to live in montreal because the houses have multiple interesting doors.
Duplexes are often banned for reasons, bad reasons, but reasons. 1)allowing them could make housing more affordable to more people, other people -poor people, and what some in the us call "Urban" people. 2) it could increase availability of housing, which intern could reduce renting prices as the cost of living will not be as inflated by artificial scarcity. 3) its different and therefore wrong.
I don't get this bizarre micro-managing
I’ve lived in MTL and TO and didn’t know the root cause of this!
Hey does anyone know an important city planning subject… oh I know… DOORS!
multiple (4 or more) front doors just seem so ridiculous to me. with many of those examples, you'll have the exact same staircase multiple times, just halfed in width, rather than one shared staircase for all flats
Of course a shared entrance is more efficient use of space, but is it ridiculous to suggest that most people prefer a private entrance to their own apartments?
I want to have my own entrance door. I love chaotic straicases in Montreal for each door. I don't know what "urban science" says about it. may be it says that it is bad and we should destroy it, because the whole modern urban scince is about "how to make everything more EFFICEINT!!! You hate it? Doesn't matter, because IT'S EFFICIENT!!!".
Doors are scary!😨
Can a city have too many doors?
The Lady of Pain wants to know your location.
I hope ridership increases exponentially! It will make it nicer for me to drive! Go mass transit!
An examination of the history of single family zoning and separation of uses through zoning cannot be considered without acknowledging that it was used implicitly and explicitly to keep black and brown people and the less affluent out of white neighborhoods. I don't know about the history of housing in Canada and how explicitly racial segregation was a factor in how it developed. Seems like a ploy to discourage building of multi-tenant housing and to keep houses unaffordable. In US/Canada houses are primary sources of wealth creation and people vote with their property values. Seems too akin to servant's entrances needing to be hidden away... Adequate housing is a human right..
Not really.
@@shauncameron8390 Two word reply to a year old comment.
"Character" is NIMBY's trump card
"toronto neighbourhood aesthetic" lol
3:05 F U, stop sign!
So we need ONE door! In and out! Locked all all times! That WILL stop mass school shootings...
Sorry guys, but these multiple front doors don't look fine in Montreal either.
It is certainly a minor issue and one that would be questonable to regulate, but still the examples in the video look pretty ugly to me.
There's no accounting for taste!
love it
HIDE THE POORS AWAY!!!!! ALL THESE DOORS AND WILL TEMP OUR CHILDREN INTO BECOMING RENTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yet another reason that Montreal is better than Toronto
Preeeeeeeach
Another case of the horrors of free market capitalism.
No. (Door shouty ad): m.ruclips.net/video/zAKKQsAZZYs/видео.html
Adoorable
U guys are so weird up there
Up there in Toronto (speaking as an American) or up there in Montreal (speaking as an American/Torontonian)?
That all looks nice, I'm just worried about going to Montreal since I'm from Toronto that I'll be discriminated against cause I happen to be from Toronto and how much the Quebecois hate Ontarians and English Speakers, I've experienced this first hand at La Ronde's front gate and shops around Montreal where I am treated less cause I speak english and are from Ontario
While you'll find bad apples everywhere, we didn't have the experience of being treated poorly at all. We've found that if you're friendly and make an effort to meet people where they're coming from, it all works out. With that said, we moved to Montreal with a particular interest in developing our French speaking and we already knew we loved the city. (One of us is from Waterloo and one of us from Halifax area originally).
@@OhTheUrbanity I do find that Quebecois are more rude and arrogant than Ontarians, but that's hardly saying anything cause here in, say, Mississauga, people drive very selfishly and are territorial
I was born in Montreal but whenever I have returned to visit I have noticed incidences of such hostility where before there were none. As well, you can now encounter retail staff who can't speak English. If I was an American tourist I wouldn't return for any reason.
What a mean and unfair comment to claim we all hate whole categories of people. I'm sorry anyone ever has a negative experience in my city. Yet, I never go to Toronto and insist everyone must serve me in French... How do you think they'd treat me if I did, though?
@@jeandanielodonnncada I just think that cause a majority of Canada speaks english and Montreal claims to be a bilingual city that I should at least expect a bit of english service. I do want to go back to Montreal since I have a weird guilty pleasure for that city even if I can't read the signs, it's still pretty cool that we have a section of Canada only a 6 hour train away that is completely different from home.
"It wouldn't destroy the character of neighbourhoods in Toronto if we just made them all look like neighbourhoods in Montreal."