At Home in Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles Festival Neighborhood

Edda Bild, Daniel Steele, and Catherine Guastavino

Urban festivals have traditionally been considered incompatible with residential areas because of their contrasting sonic characters, where the sounds of festivals are treated as a nuisance for residents. However, the neighborhood dedicated to housing festivals in downtown Montreal is also the home of diverse groups of residents and workers. Based on a diary and interview study with residents of the Quartier des spectacles festival neighborhood, and building upon research on touristification, festivals as third places, and soundscape, we explored what it meant to be at home in a festival neighborhood, focusing on the sonic experiences of locals. Findings provided a more nuanced portrayal of everyday life in a dense, lively urban environment transformed through touristification. Residents do not consider the sounds of festivals as a primary source of annoyance; on the contrary, these sounds inspire them to engage with their neighborhood, suggesting a more porous living experience between indoor and outdoor spaces. Drawing on the characterization of other imagined residents by our participants, we conclude by introducing the idea of soundscape personas as a practical method in participatory decision-making for the future of the neighborhood.

1. Introduction

2. Context – Quartier des Spectacles

3. Literature Review

4. Methods

5. Results

7. Conclusion

In this paper, we described the findings of an exploratory study on what it means to be at home in a festival neighborhood. Results reveal that, counter to the intuitive assumption that festivals would be the focal point of sound complaints, the concerns of residents were actually more everyday: concerns about construction noise or disruption from late-night users leaving indoor events, a typical thread in nighttime noise management. The festivals and associated sounds were largely deemed “worth it” to the people who traditional recreation noise discourses would typically classify as “victims” struggling with livability concerns in their neighborhood. Our research revisited the assumed livability-vitality dichotomy by proposing a more complex picture. Furthermore, festival sounds demonstrate the porosity of the home environment and the loose boundaries between private and public spaces, thereby extending the concept of third places beyond their spatial limitations through often intentional acts of listening. The complexity of experiences that residents and workers in Quartier des Spectacles described and the variety of opinions on who the neighborhood is for informed our development of the concept of soundscape personas.

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