Abstract

In this normative inquiry, we will assess two planning policies that the Montreal Citizen's Movement (MCM), a municipal party of the left, experimented with while in power at the City of Montreal, from 1986 to 1994. The MCM implemented an unprecedented public consultation policy and it also wished to put in place a compensation policy for equal housing and land-use opportunities, which, effectively, it tried in a redevelopment project known as 'Overdale' in 1987. These two experiments were an attempt to tame the land-use market and to make it ethical. In assessing these experiments, we will first propose planning principles built on egalitarian ethics and, then, apply those egalitarian planning principles as evaluation criteria in the assessment. We will also examine similar experiments carried out elsewhere; we will compare the MCM public consultation policy with the Participative Budget of Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the Overdale experience of compensation with a case from Santa Monica, California. The MCM public consultation experiment was, without doubt, an exciting start that brought the politics of public deliberation to planning; however, we will argue that we need to put egalitarian constraints on planning deliberation if we want that deliberation to be not only a source of good planning but also of community building. We will also argue that the Overdale experiment of compensation is indeed a good source of heuristic learning on how to plan for equal land-use opportunities in a city of market liberalism such as Montreal. In this thesis we will persistently argue that we should appeal to egalitarian reason, in order to build a good and beautiful city.