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Montreal has long been perceived as “a city of tenants” in a North-American world of owners. This perception has been explained by the strong presence of French Canadians who were poor and had a lower preference for home ownership. This article provides for the first time relevant data that allows a detailed comparison of housing types, values, tenure and occupations of French Canadians, English Canadians and immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, and for the cities of Montreal, Lachine, Outremont, Verdun and Westmount, between 1921 and 1951. Indeed, Montreal was largely a town of tenants living in plexes. But these data show that, in proportion, French Canadians were as much owner-occupants as other ethnic groups and that, in fact, the low rate of owner-occupancy was due more to English Canadians and Eastern Europeans who were attracted to the new apartment buildings. These data also show that one can be a wealthy tenant living in a downtown apartment of great value, or the owner with limited means of a house of little value on the outskirts of the city.

In the field of urban planning and housing, particularly, the fourties and the fifties constituted a specific period: a period of transition, of passage to the contemporary era. In the light of concrete events, issues and debates surrounding major developments in housing and urban planning, this paper examines the political and social "arrangements" brought in view by three sets of issues related to the transformation of the urban space in the Montreal area. The first part of the paper deals with the willingness of the federal government to intervene in the housing field and the local resistances to that intervention. The second part, to be published in the next issue, will focus on the linkages between housing types and models of living conditions with a case-study of the cooperative housing movement, on one hand, and on the orientations of urban development and more precisely the spatial redistribution of urban activities and social classes, on the other hand.Dans les domaines de l’aménagement urbain et du logement, en particulier, les années quarante et cinquante constituent, pour Montréal, une période particulière : celle de la transition, du passage à l’ère contemporaine. À la lumière des événements, des enjeux et des débats surgis à l’occasion d’opérations marquantes en matière de logement et d’urbanisme, cet article examine les enjeux de la transformation de l’espace urbain montréalais. La première tranche de l’article est consacrée à l’évolution du rôle de l’État fédéral en matière de logement et de ses rapports avec les forces locales. La deuxième tranche, à paraître, portera sur l’articulation entre les modes de logement et l’aménagement des modes de vie, analysée principalement dans le cas de l’action coopérative, d’une part, et sur les volontés de redistribution et les redistributions effectives des fonctions urbaines et des groupes sociaux dans l’espace, d’autre part

In the field of urban planning and housing, particularly, the fourties and the fifties constituted a specific period: a period of transition, of passage to the contemporary era. In the light of concrete events, issues and debates surrounding major developments in housing and urban planning, this paper examines the political and social "arrangements" brought in view by three sets of issues related to the transformation of the urban space in the Montreal area. The first part of the paper deals with the willingness of the federal government to intervene in the housing field and the local resistances to that intervention. The second part, to be published in the next issue, will focus on the linkages between housing types and models of living conditions with a case-study of the cooperative housing movement, on one hand, and on the orientations of urban development and more precisely the spatial redistribution of urban activities and social classes, on the other hand.Dans les domaines de l’aménagement urbain et du logement, en particulier, les années quarante et cinquante constituent, pour Montréal, une période particulière : celle de la transition, du passage à l’ère contemporaine. À la lumière des événements, des enjeux et des débats surgis à l’occasion d’opérations marquantes en matière de logement et d’urbanisme, cet article examine les enjeux de la transformation de l’espace urbain montréalais. La première tranche de l’article est consacrée à l’évolution du rôle de l’État fédéral en matière de logement et de ses rapports avec les forces locales. La deuxième tranche, à paraître, portera sur l’articulation entre les modes de logement et l’aménagement des modes vie, analysée principalement dans le cas de l’action coopérative, d’une part, et sur les volontés de redistribution et les redistributions effectives des fonctions urbaines et des groupes sociaux dans l’espace, d’autre part

No abstract