A Perch on the Edge of the World

There are two types of architectural birdcages in Macau: casinos and balconies. One of this southern Chinese city’s most famous casinos, the gloriously kitschy Lisboa, could coop up a giant parrot, and across town, a massive aviary greets visitors at the city’s newest gambling complex, in the Four Seasons Hotel. This is the only place in China where gambling is legal—in 2006, revenues surpassed those of Las Vegas—but unlike in nearby Hong Kong, traditional aesthetics are not yet lost. It doesn’t take long to wander away from the casinos into crowded streets that double as living rooms; amid the Portuguese street signs and droopy banyan trees, you’ll see dozens of balconies and windowsills, each enclosed by iron grates. The bars are a precaution against burglary, but the effect is a jumble of human-sized birdcages above the street, with potted plants and laundry instead of seed trays and perches.

Those balconies are a large reason why, despite the flashing casino lights on the horizon, Macau continues to feel lived-in and down-to-earth. They’re a bridge between the private and the public, inviting domestic activity into the street and social life into the home. If the city is a stage, the balcony is just that—the balcony, a spot for observing drama and, as with the two old men in The Muppets, occasionally participating in it.

And balconies are unique in every city. In Vancouver’s West End, where apartment buildings nestle into lush greenery, they are for quiet post-dinner conversation and solitary reading. Neighbours are glimpsed, voyeuristically, but interaction is rare. In the coastal Indian city of Chennai, by contrast, teenagers flirt “across floors and across blocks,” reports The Hindu, prompting mothers to warn their daughters against spending too much time on the balcony. Of course, there are few cities so passionate about its balconies as Montreal, where, as memories of the long winter melt with the snow, summer brings the whole city outside. Almost every evening from May until October, the murmur of conversation and clinking of beer bottles drifts down from overhead.

Things are different in Hong Kong, where I now live. Here, across the Pearl River Delta from Macau, summers are muggy, and for decades balconies had the all-important task of providing ventilation to sweltering apartments. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both British colonial tenements and tong lau—literally “Chinese building”—were graced with spacious balconies and large, recessed verandas.

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A City and its Balconies

Back in 2002, I was hired to write the cover story for Maisonneuve’s breakout third issue. It was my first real writing assignment and a big part of the reason why I ended up on the career path down which I’m now stumbling. Looking back, I cringe at the cloying introduction, but aside from that, I think it’s a pretty decent treatment of one of the defining aspects of Montreal and the first thing that struck me when I moved there: balconies.

My first two apartments were balcony-less; for two years, I was haunted by the feeling of missing out on some essential part of the Montreal experience. Finally, after finding an apartment on Park Avenue that was properly-balconied (one in the front, one in the back), I began to immerse myself in summer’s balcony life. Sitting in the afternoon sun, I chatted with my next-door neighbour, who was on her balcony whenever she wasn’t working at a café down the street. I watched the old Greek man next door tend the tomatoes he grew on the roof of the shed in his backyard. I spied on people cycling or strolling down the back lane.

Walking through any Montreal neighbourhood is an experience defined by the balconies you pass by. Near the corner of Park and Fairmount, an old man spends most of the summer sitting on his first-floor balcony listening to Greek radio at full volume. In north-end Villeray, tenants along busy St. Denis advertise their nationalism with plastic Quebec flags affixed to their balcony’s railings. The darkness of warm summer nights is always softened by the murmur of conversation and clinking of beer bottles coming from the balconies above.

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Balcony Life in Rome

In the sweltering Roman summer, balconies aren’t used so much to escape the heat—that’s what air conditioning and metal shutters are for—as they are to linger over a cigarette, spying on the neighbours. Or maybe just to hang the laundry.

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Getting to Know the Plex

There’s a type of urban housing that is more versatile than rowhouses, more human-scaled than apartment buildings and far denser than single-family homes. It’s called the plex—but unless you’ve lived in a select few cities, you’ve probably never heard of it.

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Popularity: 22% [?]