Built environment active promotion in Montreal: the pedestrianism challenge

The paper deals with a multidisciplinary research on built environment preservation and promotion actions assumed as remarkable expressions of the societal aspirations and attitudes to creativity. The research focuses on the Canadian city of Montreal, taking into account its recent efforts of meeting the challenge of the knowledge economy, redesigning urban environment, according to the sustainable requirements, stressing inner qualities, matching together development needs and heritage preservation with an appropriate action of control for users needs. The paper deals with Montreal's built environment characteristics with the help of several examples that show the attitudes to a new idea of urban creativity: Starting from Montreal designation as "UNESCO City of Design" on 17 May 2006, the paper will take into account: • efforts to track the town's historical complexity by integrating new designs with local architectural traditional characteristics; • concertation efforts between users and the municipality; • efforts to propose new models for the use of urban spaces.