CTV News Interview Featuring Dr. Ursula Eicker

Dr. Ursula Eicker, Concordia’s Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) was featured on this CTV News interview to discuss the concept of the 15-min city, and how Montreal can evolve and change considering the social and economic changes brought forward by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

What will it take to create a thriving downtown core post-pandemic? “We need to become much more flexible in the use,” says Eicker, “it is not understandable why all of this office space is unused for a year. If both private landlords and the city would make it easier to quickly shift if their office spaces are empty, they could be used for housing or for pop-up stores. Flexibility is a big topic that needs to be addressed to react to these unusual situations like the pandemic.” 

The two topics are undoubtably interlinked, “we need cultural life, we need restaurants, we need life to come back to the city”, Eicker continues, “I think mixed-use is a good concept for everything in the city. It comes back to the 15-minute city, it is very much on mixed-use.”