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Is Montreal getting too successful for its own good?

For many years we were the City Development Forgot, a referendum-traumatized town with a battered economy, that compensated by … partying!

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Office towers were half-empty, but cafés were full. Downtown was littered with vacant lots, so festivals took over. Construction cranes were as rare as whooping cranes, so housing was cheap.

Too many people didn’t have work, but every day felt like TGIF. We were known as a “beautiful loser”: Slackertown, North America.

Yet today everywhere you look the cranes are flying — building new office towers, condos, shopping centres, bridges, train lines and more, in an orgy of construction.

There are routine 2019 headlines like “Montreal poised to overtake Vancouver as Canada’s second-largest housing market.”

Our downtown skyline is filling in quickly after decades of being a freeze-frame. Slackertown is becoming boomtown. It’s terrific to see, but it poses real challenges, too.