Quebec City Tour: Le Campanile
In the early 1980s, New Urbanism arose as a reaction to suburban sprawl, advocating a return to traditional city planning. The Campanile area, laid out in 1986, was built according to these ideas. This dense neighbourhood lies beyond the low-density suburbs of Sainte-Foy on the edge of Greater Quebec. Just when you think you’ve hit the wilderness, there it is.
New Urbanist principles dictate that neighbourhoods should have a discernable centre. The centre here is a “campanile,” or clock tower. Beneath the tower is a modern day take on an old market hall, containing a supermarket, a pharmacy, and a few specialty food stores. A typical main street stretches up from this clock tower and has managed to attract an interesting array of shops.
The architecture of the area recalls the postmodern school at its blandest. It is inspired by the morphology of an old-style neighbourhood, but reduces these shapes to their dullest expressions. With its cheap bricks and cheap shingles, it is a budget pastiche of traditional architecture built by a developer trying to keep costs to a minimum. The eighties edge is expressed through balcony railings made of bright red metal tubing connected to glass panels. Needless to say, none of these buildings have aged very gracefully.
Nevertheless, it is a functional pedestrian-friendly neighbourhood. It is one of the few places in suburban Quebec where you don’t need to use your car to buy a pint of milk, go to the dentist, or eat a pizza on a terrace. I remember it being a lively sector of town when it was first inaugurated in the eighties. By the mid-nineties it had lost its spark; many shops had gone bankrupt, the sidewalks were deserted, and the only thing remaining in the “market hall” was a supermarket. In recent years, the area was given a second lease on life and many 5-7 storey mixed-use buildings were built, largely geared towards retirees. There are people on the sidewalks again, many of them inching along on walking frames. New stores have opened up, including lots of physiotherapy clinics.
Entrance to the “Market Hall”, or “Halles du Campanile”
On the right side of the street, new condos geared to the elderly were built in the past decade
Parc du Campanile, in the heart of the neighbourhood
Tags: Exploring the City, Quebec City, Redevelopment, Suburbia, Urban Design
