https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7762-6525
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Abstract
Urban highways tend to divide and fragment cities. As such infrastructure ages, questions about their future arise. An example of such a highway is the Montreal gateway corridor (Autoroute 20 and 720), which links downtown to Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in Montreal, Canada. In advance of considering the redesign of this highway, this research explores how such infrastructure is not just visualised as technical territory but also as social landscape. A methodological approach that bridges ethnography, visual studies, and mobility methods is tested to document the daily experience along this urban highway. Qualitative go-along interviews, documented with a digital video camera, were used to capture the dynamic experience of urban infrastructure. The concurrently verbatim account and video sequences analysis helped to access meaning, embodied in the participant’s experiences, as well as to make possible the interpretation of aspirations for the redesign of these infrastructure territories.
Acknowledgements
Firstly, we would like to thank all the participants for their time and generosity during the go-along interviews. We also thank Cathleen Poehler and Sharon Lax for their precious help in translating the manuscript. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their insights that have greatly improved our paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 This article is part of an ongoing reflection on the development of the city entrance between Montréal-Trudeau International Airport (YUL) and downtown Montreal.
2 This research received the required ethical approval from the University of Montreal.
3 SONY—ActionCam 4K X1000V/X1000VR with Wi-Fi and GPS
4 The text and video material were analysed using ATLAS.ti 7 software. ATLAS.ti is a computer software program used for qualitative analysis of large bodies of textual, graphical, audio and video data. For example, this software allows researchers to associate verbatim passages with relevant visual elements or videos sequences to which (the passages) are linked or related.
5 The words chosen to designate and describe these themes reflect participants’ statements as closely as possible.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Emile Forest
Emile Forest is a researcher, a designer and, sometimes, a writer, who is trained in architecture and urbanism. His work explores new approaches to territorial planning and design in relation to the ecological, technological and political challenges of our time. Emile is an urban researcher and strategic designer at Dark Matter Labs. In 2019, he co-founded the non-profit organisation Nouveaux Voisins, which aims to develop alternatives for converting residential lawns into areas rich in biodiversity. During his academic years, he was the laureate of considerable prizes, namely the student merit prize of the Ordre des urbanistes du Québec (OUQ) (Quebec order of urban planners) and the prize of excellence of the Institute of Urbanism of the University of Montreal.
Sylvain Paquette
Sylvain Paquette is Full Professor at the School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Montreal. Since 2017, he has been director of the Chair in Landscape and Environmental Design at the same institution. His expertise lies in landscape sociology, which examines landscapes from social and cultural perspectives. He has contributed to the renewal of landscape and planning studies, with regard to both theory and methodology, among others by developing landscape management tools. His research projects are funded by the main research support councils in Canada as well as through collaborations with public or parapublic authorities. He is co-author of YUL/MTL Moving Landscapes (Applied Research + Design Publishing, ORO Editions, 2015).