Immigration and Montreal

Wrapping up for a moment the immigration series, since I prefer to discuss places I have my own photos of, let's look at a final Canadian city: Montreal.

Home of the Biosphere!

Now, this is a little different from the other Canadian cities in terms of immigration because Quebec runs its own immigration scheme within the larger Canadian one; if you want to move to Quebec, you better speak French and/or (probably and) have a job--or you need to have lived in the rest of Canada long enough to have a legal right to relocate to Quebec.

But let us assume you clear that high bar, or are a dual Canadian citizen, or somesuch. What urbanist advantages does Montreal present?

1. Building Rail

Montreal is remarkable within the North American context for actually building a lot of rail fairly quickly right now: not on the legacy metro, but on a new system call the REM (Réseau express métropolitain, a very similar term to Paris's RER aka Réseau express régional). Unlike the RER, which is heavy rail, the REM is light rail. And it's a bit more urban and less regional (one might even say...métropolitain instead of régional...). But the central premise that the city is becoming easier to transit quickly, and without a car, is a big urbanist plus. It opens up areas of the city that were harder to get to and navigate and brings some TOD with it.

This is particularly good if you're moving to the city, as it disrupts some of the entrenched costs and flow of the existing city which (say it with me) is having something of a housing crisis just like every other city we've looked at.

And of course, the existing metro isn't bad either (including but not limited to its very nice public art):

I really dig these dodecahedrons.

2. Other Urbanist Innovation

The YouTube channel Oh the Urbanity is based in Montreal, so I'll just gesture here towards a lot of their thoughts on this: Montreal is not just building rail, it's also building bike lanes and intelligent modal filters, while filling in missing middle housing.

In other words, Montreal is actively becoming a more pleasant place to live, especially if you don't have a car, and especially if you would like to be able to live in a walkable, bikeable community.

And one with nice cultural amenities like this art museum:

As with the REM, the other great element for immigrants here is that not all of this is happening in the most expensive central zones. You can legitimately move here and possibly get access to these benefits.

As well as very nice corndogs (aka pogo) at a giant orange ball.

3. Bilingual Bagels

Montreal is also just a good city for immigrants itself, expansions aside. It's part of Quebec, and as you might imagine (or know from the above point about immigration law) that means there's a strong emphasis on French in the community, and it's officially bilingual in the opposite way that Ontario and Vancouver are: French as default, and English as an afterthought, rather than the reverse.

As at this board game (excuse me, jeux de societé) café.

But unlike what we might call up-province Quebec, by analogy with upstate New York, Montreal has a thriving Anglophone community as well and other languages too. 

And that linguistic mélange is mirrored in other cultural mixing as well. The bagels in this section title are a Jewish legacy for the city (even my own family appears to have briefly come through Montreal on their way to the US as Jewish immigrants) and Montreal bagels are so, so good. They aren't just a symbol of a multicultural food scene, though they are just the tip of that iceberg. They also speak to the nightlife, even if they aren't sites for drinking and dancing: the bagel bakeries are open very, very late, which is also a typical element of the Montreal environment.

The best bagels possibly in the world.

Montreal is a great city to live in, and one that folds immigrant populations into a vibrant social mix--as long as Quebec will let you immigrate.

Walkable, bikeable (even in the winter), gorgeous (as in the above picture of le village); Montreal definitely deserves to be on a list of excellent places to immigrate to, if you can.

An Annoyance of Electric Vehicles

I don't just use an e-bike to get around; we have two electric cars as well, and I recently had an opportunity to take one up from the Quad Cities to Milwaukee, a drive of about three and a half hours which, given current weather conditions (i.e. cold and wind) required one charging stop along the way. 

I want to talk here very briefly about how we aren't yet at the point of making these a real part of our transportation infrastructure--and how while I love my EVs, they aren't enough alone to solve the problems they're sometimes suggested as a solution for.

1. Infrastructure -- Soft and Hard

The biggest current hurdle is infrastructure for EVs--both hard infrastructure (actual charging stations) and what I want to call soft infrastructure: how we make that hard infrastructure visible and digestible for those using it.

Some Shell stations have EV chargers. There's even an app for that. Does this one?

No, it doesn't. But you don't know that from the sign: Shell stations with EV chargers also don't put the presence of EV chargers or the price of EV charging on the sign.

We need to have more EV chargers, as a start (and it's really a shame we have so many types of plugs not all of which are interoperable). But we also need to make it so that you can actually use an EV charger like you can use a gas charger: by a) knowing when there's one available without an app (since you are probably driving a car, and thus shouldn't be looking at a phone), b) knowing the price of the charger so that you can choose which one to use (just like that sign up there shows the price of gas), and c) making actually charging an EV simpler, primarily by allowing people to just use a credit card (as they can, again, with gas) or even cash, rather than a proprietary app that may not even work.

So we have a long way to go to make EV charging actually practical on the same level as gas chargers--and that's not even including the delay in charging times versus gas filling times.

2. What EVs Don't Fix

Of course, driving to Milwaukee wouldn't have been my preference in the first place if the US had actual train infrastructure. EVs are still cars; they take up the same space on the road, and they are just as individualized as a car in terms of where they run and how many people-miles they cover.

This guy is just as much of a car as anything that runs on gas.

That means that while EVs may help with some marginal elements of climate change (by reducing car emissions) they don't help with traffic (obviously) and they still require separate fuel and power for each individual, rather than allowing us to collectively group our outputs for greater efficiency.

A bus or a train still does better, in other words.

This is also a blue electric vehicle, but it moves a lot more people, a lot more efficiently.

3. Delays

Another consideration that I think gets sometimes missed along the way when comparing cars and other forms of transportation is that we attribute the issues we might run into in a car to the environment, but the delays of a train or a bus to the mode of transportation. 

I got stuck in Rockford for three hours because of faulty charging infrastructure. Admittedly, this could be seen as an EV-vs.-gas issue, but I've had bad gas pumps too, and bad traffic, and lots of delays in cars. But those tend to get treated as an issue for that trip.

If I had a train get in three hours late, the typical reaction is to treat it as a flaw in trains.

Oh no, NS is so unreliable. 

These buses are delayed. These cars? Just a bad trip; cars are so much faster than transit.

Until we can switch up our thinking on these issues, we won't really get to true efficient transit.

Immigration and Vancouver

Toronto is, of course, hardly the only Canadian city that draws American interest and immigrants. Vancouver famously has extremely high cost of living but also ranks quite high on quality of life; personally, I've already revealed my pro-Vancouver bias in CityBracket 2025.

But while it may be a good, even great city, is it a good place to actually immigrate to? Let's talk!

1. Proximity and Geography

As with much of Canada, at least the parts people live in, Vancouver has the benefit for US immigrants of being close to the US, both in the sense of easy travel to the US (love that train! Accept that bus!) but also in the sense that the geography/climate/etc. are America-like in some sense.

This is less true in places like Calgary and Winnipeg and more true in places like Vancouver because of the Pacific Coast climate.

Geographically, Vancouver has it all, from mountains (literally in the city up in North Van) to forests, plains, rivers, estuaries, and the ocean. Unless you're from central Nebraska or really far down South, you should be able to find a part of Metro Vancouver that reminds you in some way of home--only embedded in an urbanist landscape you probably didn't have there.

Beach, mountain, forest, water.

And that's the urbanist angle here: Vancouver connects all this varied geography efficiently and effectively so that you can go from place to place without taking the amount of time you might expect from a US context, and also so you can live anywhere in the metro region and still access either whatever you wanted to visit or wherever you wanted to or needed to work (or both).

Come from the Quad Cities? Well, there's plenty of river here, and you can also pretend (as the original explorers did!) that False Creek is just a big wide river like the mighty Mississippi.

Complete with paddleboat!

2. Vancouverism

Look, Vancouver's distinctive urban landscape and design has its detractors. But while I'll admit some critiques have some validity, overall I am a big fan of Vancouverism and I think most urbanist-interested immigrants will too.

Tall, thinnish buildings that are designed to still preserve the ability to see nature around them. Shops and services in the broader pediments of those big structures, so that ground level is attractive and busy, not a deep cavern from which one can never emerge. Transit-oriented and bike-oriented development, with urban green space and pedestrian access. 

Like this urban garden on Davie.

All the things that put Vancouver in the CityBracket final, in other words.

For immigrants in particular I'll suggest that (prices aside and that is a big aside) that kind of urban density and design is ideal for developing a sense of belonging in place. You have a lot of neighbors (or neighbours) but also a lot of neighborhood (or neighbourhood) spaces to meet them and mingle. If making acquaintances is a goal, and it likely is for an immigrant, I've found Vancouver an easy place to encounter people and a less chilly place than, say, nearby Seattle on the US side (sorry, hometown).

Vancouverism isn't perfect, but the urban society it is trying to produce is one that integrates people into community exactly how you might need if you're moving here from elsewhere.

3. Multicentrality

I keep coming back to this (hi Golden Horseshoe and Randstad!) but I think one of the biggest advantages for immigrants is coming to an effectively integrated region rather than a city, sprawl, and suburbs. Sure, Vancouver has those, but they're much more transit-integrated than in most US cities and they have their own individual downtown areas that have TOD. 

Welcome to North Vancouver!

That means that Vancouver (Metro Vancouver that is) has the same advantages, or similar ones, as we've discussed previously: the ability to live in multiple options for places and get to jobs and services, and the ability to find a community where you want or need to, alongside the flexibility that comes with both. And those are big for an immigrant who might know only a few people, or have to find a job wherever and hope that a spouse or partner can do the same in a different wherever--and need to afford it as well.

Which is admittedly hard in Vancouver.

And that's the biggest element here, in some ways. I think Vancouver is amazing. Given winning the lottery, I might well choose it as a place to immigrate, especially coming from the US (London won CityBracket but it's much further). But while its urbanist immigration qualifications are great, you have to be able to afford it.

What Does Complexity Mean?

 A very good article from Freewheeling on how complexity is not actually the problem with UK train fares, and it raises a distinction that I think is important for transit in the US (which has other problems than complexity, but also accusations of complexity). That is: it's not really about complexity, it's about cognitive load, jeopardy, and arbitrariness.

In other words, it's about

a) how much do I have to think?

b) how much risk is there to me if I do it wrong?

and 

c) can I detect the base logic of how it works (not necessarily the details, but the principles on which those details are built).

I want to suggest that these are also the main issues of people (not) using transit in the US rather than the actual complexity of transit.

1. Cognitive Load

US systems tend to make it surprisingly difficult to figure out how you're actually going to get from point A to point B, and back. You have to think about it pretty heavily, rather than being able to show up, go, and come back.

How often does this come? Where does it go? When does it stop running? How much does it cost? 

I don't know. And often I won't know. 

Yes, there are cities that try to improve that but their app use is not always helpful and their wayfinding likewise.

Plus, US transit (especially in cities like the Quad Cities) can often emphasize coverage over both frequency and directness, meaning that navigating the map is also quite difficult for a novice.

2. Jeopardy

Related to that: if I can't trust that I'll actually get back, or that I'll make it to where I need to go in time, I'm not going to use that form of transit.

And if I think it's actually dangerous, I also won't (though that's massively overstated when you consider the most dangerous part of traveling on the street is the car crashes and transit largely avoids those). 

Well, US transit kind of fails on both of those, especially the first, with the obvious exceptions:

Hello, NYC. Please ignore the following, except when there are transit works.

But largely in the US, it's common to have buses that stop running early, or take odd routes, or take forever to get there. All of which make there a genuine sense of jeopardy that you'll actually be able to do what you need to do, and that you'll be punished by being stranded otherwise.

3. Arbitrariness

Well, all of the choices that contribute to the above two elements feel very, very arbitrary.

Just like sidewalks, transit sometimes just...ends oddly. Or, in the case of  the rail lines that inspired "Waiting for the Interurban," ceases to exist altogether.

Artistic license aside, while we can ultimately look at things like "coverage was the idea here" to figure out some of the odder elements in US transit, a lot of networks could use a real redesign to actually go where people might want to take it. At the moment, they often feel like arbitrary lines on a map, with arbitrary costs, arbitrary hours, arbitrary frequency, etc.

Give people a clear reason why their bus runs when it runs, where it runs, etc., and it might make sense, but that kind of messaging is rare.

As a result, I think it's not just fare structures in the US that fall afoul of Freewheeling's ersatz complexity; it's whole transit agencies.

Shut up, NYC, I wasn't talking to you.

Though perhaps we could discuss some things about tourists and express trains...

Immigration and the Randstad

 Today I'm going to talk about immigration and a metro region that most Americans may not have heard of even though they've heard of its component parts: the Randstad region in the Netherlands, aka the conurbation that includes Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht--and many points in between.

Why talk about this, instead of about Amsterdam, Rotterdam, etc. alone? Because like my post on Toronto, but even more so, what matters here if you're considering immigrating is the region, not the city. As I'll discuss below, being in Haarlem instead of Amsterdam makes a difference to your life, of course, but that difference isn't like being in Seattle vs. Miami; they truly are one connected mega-city, and that has significant implications for the potential immigrant urbanist experience.

Not Seattle vs. Miami but maybe Miami Subs in Haarlem though.

1. Lots of Options, If You Can Afford Them

Let me get one thing out of the way right at the top: the Netherlands has a massive housing crisis, which at least some of the locals really want to blame on immigrants. This is a recurring theme in our coverage here, of course: it seems like every major city in the West at least and the world more generally has a housing crisis, because we have created some very excellent places to live and then not built enough housing in them. 

The Netherlands are particularly small, though, so this becomes especially problematic. 

The beauty of the Randstad from an urbanist perspective is that because of its excellent transit and biking links, you can live almost anywhere in it and commute to or just visit almost anywhere else in it pretty easily (during engineering works excepted). Here is Amsterdam Centraal, the (duh) central station in Amsterdam:

Here, about five minutes of train away, is Amsterdam Sloterdijk:

Here, a bit over ten minutes from there, is Haarlem Centraal:

For context, from the NS (Dutch national rail, Nederlandse Spoorwegen) website:

That's a 17 minute trip, with 147 trains a day, or more than one every ten minutes. Metro-like frequency between two cities and three major stops. And it costs about five euros.

The Dutch still complain about NS service, which is somehow both reasonable (compared to historic performance benchmarks and prices) and ridiculous (coming from the US).

And this somehow isn't the most metro-like service between cities in the Randstad, since the Rotterdam metro actually literally goes to the Hague (line E to Den Haag Centraal). 

So while there is definitely a housing crisis, that crisis ends up functionally spread across the whole region--and that means that it's a larger and more dynamic housing market than it seems at first glance (though it does also mean you can get scooped by someone else who is also working in a different city--it goes both ways).

It also means that there is a large variation in the kind of places you can live and still work and experience culture etc. across the region. Want to live in a suburb? Sure. A major downtown? Got that. Rural? Surprisingly yes. The integration of the transportation networks means these are all options.

2. Flat-rate Urbanism

Look, the Netherlands are expensive even in Europe and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But that flattens out somewhat if you make two comparisons that are meaningful for this series: the Randstad versus other major metros and the Randstad versus the rest of the Netherlands.

This post does a pretty decent job of laying out what I mean, even though I'm not sure the post realizes it. If you look at the cost of living in any of the cities it mentions against New York, they're all 60-70% as expensive--not cheap but all cheaper than NYC.

And crucially, the "most expensive" and "least expensive" cities it lists are all in that range: it's a fairly flat space of costs. That's what I mean by flat-rate urbanism: whereas in the US or large parts of Europe there is massive variation in costs that can make large cities unbearably expensive, in the Netherlands the Randstad gives you good urbanism for basically the cost of living in the country at all.

Some of that is because the Randstad is a lot of the Netherlands. But Groningen up north doesn't get much cheaper, nor do the more rural areas. The Netherlands are expensive, but the urbanist core doesn't cost a premium on top of that, and that's a meaningful benefit if you're looking for somewhere to immigrate. And that urbanism isn't necessarily expensive compared to urbanism elsewhere, either--if you're looking for somewhere urbanist to immigrate, you're not comparing to the cheapest places on earth, but to other urban locations, and that makes the Randstad look better.

3. The Dang Grocery Stores

Look, I'm already on the record about this so I won't beat a dead horse.

I like shopping for groceries in Dutch supermarkets.

I like their size, their frequent appearance throughout neighborhoods, the freshness of their produce, and their selection given their size. I think that it's a healthier way to approach food acquisition than we usually see in American cities, and I think it's also a benefit for immigrants who may not be certain where they want to shop, what food they want to buy, which staple foods from the new country they want to adapt to and which they wish to cling to from the old. You can and should try multiple places; you can and should expect there to be multiple places to try. And you can take part in the Gym of Life along the way because you don't need to drive to access them.

I haven't even touched on the biking culture, really--that should tell you how much I like the grocery stores.

So yes: the Netherlands aren't cheap, they're getting less friendly to immigrants as so many places are, and they have a lot of complaints about their (from the outside) very good rail service. But there's a reason they're seen as an urbanist mecca, and the Randstad is a great place if you're looking for that in an immigration experience.

Plus if you're American there's the DAFT treaty, which makes it infinitely easier to go to the Netherlands than any of their neighbors.

It's not a slam dunk (compare the distance from Toronto to the US border vs. Amsterdam...) but it's definitely worth considering.

Coolness

Today I want to talk about something that I often see raised as a reason that people want to drive cars instead of taking transit: the cool factor.

And look, I'm not going to pretend that I'm an expert on cool. I am, perhaps, the opposite. But at the same time, let me at least try to explain why I don't think that cars are actually that cool compared to actual, exciting transit options.

1. What Are We Contrasting?

Let me start with this: in the Quad Cities context, and honestly in a lot of American contexts, I'd say that the conventional wisdom of which is cooler is correct.

This Mustang is cooler than this bus:

Bussy here is a good, solid vehicle and I would trust it in a crash much more than the Mustang, but it is boxy and basic. Of course, this car (which I love driving, but that's a different point) is less cool:

Classic bug-eyed Nissan Leaf: not cool.

This Jeep: cooler.

This bus: less cool.

Even in the same snow!

So, yes, what we're comparing matters a lot. This is why I'm saying that modern, up to date transit vehicles can be a lot cooler.

2. Keep Your Stuff Updated

Those buses were never cool, at least not in living memory. But also, transit tech that was cool can stop being cool (though retro is also a thing).

The El, I would argue, is retro.

El trains, however, are not.

The main distinction so far is not necessarily boxy vs sleek (the Jeep is pretty boxy but, I think, also considered fairly cool). It's up to date vs dated.

So this tram, which is sleek and up to date, is something else:

Look at those rounded edges and that smooth motion (I realize this is a still photo; I still think you can picture it from the picture).

The Croydon tram is not as cool, but could be if they updated the trainset:

And even this I like, personally: the green is a real touch of difference from the surroundings that makes it pop.

It's certainly less dated than the buses.

3. Speed Kills

One of the ways that I think the cars get the reputation for coolness is also the speed at which they travel. Trams, buses, metros, trains in the US: we think of these as pokey vehicles where you feel like you're trapped aboard, which massively limits cool factor.

Bonjour, je suis le TGV: le train à grande vitesse, aka the high-speed train.

This RER train is not a high-speed train, but look at that friendly front design--and it does go much faster than an American is probably used to their trains going.

This burst shot might give a sense of that.

Compare the Metra: blocky, slower, not as cool.

Basically, my takeaway here is that trains can be cool, but in the US they usually aren't. It's just not a thing we prioritize. Take the T in Boston:

I love the T but that train looks like it comes from the 1970s, and not necessarily in a cool way.

Contrast with the Mustang or Jeep above and you can see the cool difference.

But also contrast with a more up to date, cleaner, faster metro:

The newer SkyTrain sets in Vancouver are a lot cooler.

Which brings me to my conclusion: when people say cars are cooler, they're thinking about two categories of car, the awesome vintage car and the sweet new ride. But most cars on the road aren't either of those. And so when we contrast to most transit in the US, like Mr. Boxy Bus here, the comparison is weighted against the transit.

But when we consider the best of what transit can look like, it gets pretty cool too.

And you can add in some additional cool in terms of cooling the planet, since they're massively more efficient in fuel use.

Immigration and Toronto

As an American blogger, there's a sense that Canada is the gold standard of potential places to immigrate to: common language, high overlap in culture, closer than pretty much anywhere to friends and family back in the US, and a similar standard of living with a better social safety net.

But how does this translate into urbanist principles when considering immigrating to its major cities?

1. Regional Integration is Key

When I talk about Toronto, I think it's important to be talking about the entire Golden Horseshoe for potential immigrants, at some level, or at least the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). 

This is because if you're rich enough to actually buy into Toronto itself, you're probably having a different conversation from someone who ends up in Hamilton or Scarborough. 

Fortunately, they're increasing regional integration (though that project has faced setbacks), and there seems to be at least some awareness that yes, this needs to function as a region, not just as an economically-connected series of distinct areas. That means in the GTA that you finally see some new transit building within Toronto, and that it integrates into the plays for Go trains in the larger region.

They do have a fair number of trains! Even if the service isn't nearly at its best yet.

But if you're moving here, you're implicitly placing a bet on this actually coming to fruition: especially if you're hoping to be able to take a Go train consistently towards the US border, something that's right now not really a great option.

Of course, you could always just drive on the Gardiner to the 401, but let me tell you, that's not a fun experience. 

Again, if you can afford to live down where I took these pictures, you'll probably be fine regardless.

There may be a lot of homes in these individual towers, but...not enough for demand.

That's why regional integration is going to make or break the experience here, especially for immigrant groups that either get pushed to the margins or sprinkled throughout a wide and busy city.

2. Beware Doug Ford

This is not actually about Doug Ford specifically as a person, but it is about Ford's Ontario government and its hatred of Toronto's bike lanes. 

As we've discussed elsewhere in this series, biking as a travel option can be a godsend for immigrants, since it can increase health, reduce costs, and widen the range of places you're able to live or work.

And as you can see, people in Toronto do use them--some even for their businesses, as in this delivery ebike.

And in Toronto, strong bikeshare can even mean you don't need to own a bike to use one (though financially I'd recommend owning one if you're going to literally use it every day).  

But the Ford government is opposed to non-car street space in the city and region, seeing it as an attack on drivers and (implicitly or explicitly) on the kind of people who are drivers (i.e. out-of-Toronto voters).

So while there are major positive movements in the local area around transit and urbanism, there's also evidence already that the larger provincial government is not in favor (or favour) of this as a larger matter, and may step in to prevent or even reverse urbanist developments of which they disapprove.

That's a risk if you're hinging your immigration decision on increasing or at least stable urbanism.

3. Good Bones

But it would be unfair to treat the GTA as if it were all doom and gloom; setbacks to the Go expansion and the bike lanes aside, the region has strong urbanist bones in ways that many US cities do not (or perhaps used to but no longer do).

The TTC subway may be smaller than it should be in an ideal world, but it's still a good start from which to build, and build on it they plan to. 

I remember being impressed by the bus/tram/subway integration when I first visited in 2002, not because it was perfect but because it was intelligible in a way Seattle's then was not: even as a teen I could figure out how to get from place to place (and this is pre-smartphone!) and use the connections between transit modes to navigate effectively.

If I could do it as a visiting teen two decades ago, I gotta believe that's a benefit if you move there as an adult now.

And since I insisted above that you should treat the whole GTA and/or Horseshoe here, I do think that the multicentral nature of that region is meaningful. York FC (supporters pictured above) isn't Toronto FC, and York isn't Toronto (let alone further-dispersed centers like Mississauga, St. Catherine's, or even Niagara). While this sprawl can have its own flaws, the idea of integrating these places while still allowing them their own local flavor and relevance is a promising one, and if the region can pull it off then there would be some major benefits to an almost Randstad-like system (stay tuned for some thoughts on the Randstad in the Netherlands later in this series). 

All of this is to say that there's real potential in the GTA for growth and integration that can make it a better place to live--especially for immigrants, for whom that kind of marginal geographic location is often a reality. 

Canada will continue to be a difficult place to find a job if you're not a permanent resident or citizen (and also in current economic conditions for many of them). It will continue not to be the United States-lite or anything like it. But the GTA is a real option if you're looking for a region with great potential for a significant upward trajectory of urbanism built off a historic base that's high compared to the US.