Consider this an open invitation to Premier Doug Ford, who last week ruled out legislation that would automatically allow the construction of fourplexes across the province. “We’re going to build homes, single-dwelling homes, and townhomes,” he said. “That’s what we’re focused on.”
I’d like to invite the premier to visit my hometown of Montreal so I can show him a made-in-Canada solution to the housing crisis: the triplex.
It’s helped keep the city’s urban neighbourhoods comparatively affordable. Perhaps more important, the inherent malleability of the design has allowed for the development of viable and sustainable mixed-income neighbourhoods.
Whether in the Plateau or Mile End, Saint-Henri or Verdun, the triplex reigns supreme. Block after block, borough after borough, triplexes make up a considerable portion of Montreal’s housing stock. In form and in function, the Montreal triplex has been a viable housing strategy for well over a century.
Though in most cases a triplex denotes three apartments across three floors, the same basic structure can be refashioned in countless ways: Open it all up, and it becomes a rather spacious townhouse. Divide each floor in two, and you can have six single-bedroom apartments. Excavate and finish the basement, and you can have two two-floor homes. A common arrangement involves apartments of two or three bedrooms on the second and third floors and single-bedroom apartments — or small businesses — on the ground floor.
Ford is convinced that if “you throw a four-storey tower up in a tight-knit community with housing, they’ll lose their minds.” Well, three seems to be the magic number in Montreal, for more than a few reasons. With blocks of triplexes averaging three to four housing units per building, you’re in a kind of sweet spot for residential-population density. High density without really feeling like high density.
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For this reason, a triplex can work quite well as infill housing, even in suburban or transitional residential areas with lower population density. And with sufficient setback from the street, a triplex is about as tall as you can go before buildings start casting permanent shadows on the streets and alleys below. Even with the comparatively high housing density of endless city blocks lined with triplexes, Montreal’s aren’t so tall they prevent sunlight from getting in. Those streets and alleys are lined with mature trees and gardens. Most new high-density residential construction can’t offer anything like it, and we know that proximity to nature and what Jane Jacobs termed the “ballet of the streets” makes for more genial and sustainable urban environments.
And speaking of social cohesion, the inherent flexibility of the triplex design facilitates the development of mixed-income neighbourhoods. Unless you’re counting doorways and addresses, it’s difficult to tell from the outside whether a triplex is home to one family, six singles, or two couples (or anything in between), let alone what their incomes might be.
The conditions that led to the construction of Montreal’s triplexes in the late 19th and early 20th century should be familiar to us. The city’s population was growing rapidly thanks to immigration. Urban land values were at a premium, meaning developers had little choice but to increase housing density. At the same time, even though most people would have preferred not to live in densely packed cities, most people didn’t own cars, and there were practical limits to available transport infrastructure. Affordability, density, and proximity to work, leisure, transit, and commerce had to meet on common, often tree-lined ground. Neighbourhoods built on foundations of triplexes were the happy product of considerations, constraints, and creativity.
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The era of low-density suburban housing and endless sprawl must come to an end. Economic factors and environmental considerations are already pointing clearly in this direction, but consumers are also making clear choices, and successive generations have increasingly opted for urban lifestyles. Cities that were rapidly depopulating in the middle of the last century have suddenly found themselves without sufficient housing to support the surge of recent demand.
We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The solution doesn’t have to be tiny homes or towers; it certainly must not be tent cities. Montreal provides a blueprint — tried, tested, and true — that has faithfully housed millions of people for more than a century. Its foundation is based on modest, well-built housing and a spirit of conviviality inherent to and emphasized by living in high-density yet nonetheless human-scale urban environments.
Premier Ford, I can show you thousands of streets lined with tens of thousands of homes housing hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s no utopian ideal — it’s the daily life and minimum expectation of modern city living for the bulk of Montrealers.
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