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How to sum up the good, the bad and the ugly in Montreal’s ever-changing cityscape?

There’s been plenty of the last two, not so much of the good, says Dinu Bumbaru, policy director of Heritage Montreal.

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In 2018, ground was broken on several giant condo towers; the art deco Montreal Children’s Hospital was reduced to rubble; and demolition workers razed buildings to make way for a future mega mall at the intersection of two of Canada’s most congested highways.

Vestiges of the Victorian architecture that once defined the downtown core continue to disappear, as steel and glass skyscrapers compete for prominence.

But missing from most of the real-estate projects transforming the urban environment is an overarching vision of what kind of city we want to live in, Bumbaru said.

“Do we really want a city of towers, or do we want a city that is dense without being inhuman,” Bumbaru asked.

Despite the plethora of projects underway or planned for the next few years, Montreal lacks a blueprint for building a livable and sustainable city for future generations, he said.