

Related: I'm reading Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities right now and she's explaining to me all of the reasons I loved Montreal and Toronto and didn't feel much for Ottawa. The parks thing is a great example: in Ottawa, the big parks were all incidental, stretched way out along geographic features like the Ottawa River, and thus never had a centre or a place to just hang out there. They were more like conservation areas where you could go to engage in an activity, rather than social nexuses. On the other hand, I spent so much time at Carre St. Louis in Montreal...
And finally, speaking of Montreal:
