//player.vimeo.com/video/113321361

It’s wintertime in Canada and that means people complaining about the cold and/or the fact that in our climate there are certain things that simply can’t (or shouldn’t) be done when it comes to city building.

But I don’t buy that.

A great counter example is Igloofest in Montreal. Unless you’re into electronic music (OK, fine, young people call it EDM today), you probably haven’t heard of it. But it’s basically an outdoor dance party on Montreal’s waterfront in the middle of the winter.

The opening night is tonight and the overnight low is expected to hit -27 degrees celsius. Take a look at the video at the top of this post though (click here if you can’t see it). That’s how many people are going to crowd outside in the cold and dance their hearts out this evening.

And so whether you’ve got harsh winters or summers, there are always creative ways to make it work for you. You just have to own it.

If anyone would like to take a trip to Montreal this winter, I promise to stand by my words and dance outside in the cold. Have a great weekend everyone.

A few years ago, I was touring a friend from the US around Toronto’s Financial District and the first thing he said to me was: “You have no retail.” And that’s certainly what it might look like at first glance.

But there’s actually lots of retail. It’s just all underground in an over 30 kilometer long network of walkways called the PATH.

Initially conceived of as the antidote to Canadian winters, “underground cities” are a kind of uniquely Canadian form of urbanism. Toronto and Montreal have the largest ones in the world and they continue to grow. As new towers are built, new connections are added.

But the downside to all of this is that it pulls street life down underground. And it can conceal a lot of the urban vibrancy that is actually take place. So maybe we need to come up with design solutions to better connect these subterranean cities back to street level and also not forget about the street.

I’m thinking about this today because of a CBC documentary I watched this morning called Life Below Zero. It basically argues that – unlike other cold climate cities and countries – the vast majority of Canadians actually hate winter. And underground cities are our way of trying to ignore it.

Well, I don’t hate winter. In fact, I love it because it signals snowboarding season for me. But I may be in the minority. What’s your position on winter?

Image: Flickr