Leaders' debate on Montreal's economic future - follow up

I had some very interesting comments from people reading the blog and I wanted to quickly address them. These comments were mostly regarding the urban sprawl and the migration of families towards the suburbs, taking with them obs, investment funds and creating a whole lot of traffic. None of the candidates except Mr. Bergeron had a realistic view of the problem and Mr. Bergeron had a plan that involved the increase of the transport budget by 6.3% per year for 4 years to achieve in the fifth year a mere 10% reduction in traffic. Other measures he would take would result in the loss of "only" 100,000 people in the next ten years to the suburbs. The realistic view I think is the very long term one, and we cannot approach this from the political "I need a second mandate so I will make all the unrealistic promises necessary for that to happen" point. However, it seems ingrained in our political fabric to do so... I personally left the downtown for the same reasons as everybody else: it's crowded, it's loud, it's expensive, and if I want to get some culture (e.g. theater, movies, shows, etc.), I am 30 minutes away. Moreover, if I want to have a family, I want my kids to be able to play outside safely. The only way to reverse this trend is to take the example of Outremont and create villages within the city, encourage the creation of small "downtowns". Another trend that the candidates are not taking into consideration is the virtual office, where people can work from their homes, which means that a physical location does not become such an important issue.

In conclusion, I am not even sure that the migratory trend and the traffic can even be resolved, but there would certainly be improvements if the "village within the city" concept would be considered, if the fiscal and financial aspects of living in Montreal (and Quebec in general) would be scrutinized and if the telecommute trend would also be taken into consideration.