Housing Crisis: Could New Towns Be the Solution?
- The Friendly Urbanist
- Jun 27
- 9 min read
Housing affordability has been crashing across Canada and Québec for the past decade. According to CMHC data, the share of income spent on housing in the Greater Montréal Area rose from roughly 35% in 2014 to 44% in 2024, with Québec City showing a similar increase from about 34% to 42% during the same period.
In response, provincial and municipal governments have implemented a series of reforms; Règlement sur une Métropole Mixte (RMM), zoning changes, densification policies, subsidies etc. These efforts haven’t alleviated the crisis.
Perhaps it’s time to look overseas. Just as the UK turned to postwar "new towns”, more recently, Prime Minister Keir Starmer proposed a fresh wave of planned communities in early 2025 to ease pressure on London and other hot markets.
Could Québec consider something similar? Could new towns, planned from scratch, be part of the long-term solution ?
What Are New Towns?
New towns are exactly what they sound like: entire communities built from scratch, typically on undeveloped land, with the goal of accommodating population growth in a planned, balanced, and forward-looking way. Unlike suburbs that sprawl out from existing cities, new towns are often self-contained, designed with housing, jobs, services, green space, and transit infrastructure integrated from the beginning.
The idea gained traction in the mid-20th century, particularly in postwar Britain. Faced with housing shortages and overcrowded cities, the UK launched a series of government-backed developments known as “new towns”, including now-established places like Milton Keynes, Stevenage, and Crawley. These towns were intended not only to absorb urban overflow but also to model a more modern, organized form of urban life, one where residents could live, work, and play in close proximity.
France followed suit with its villes nouvelles in the 1960s and 70s, building towns like Cergy-Pontoise to relieve pressure on Paris. Even Canada experimented with planned communities: Fermont in Québec was created in the 1970s to house iron ore workers and included residential, commercial, and social services within a single arc-shaped structure to protect against harsh weather.
While these efforts had mixed results, they share a common ambition; to shape growth deliberately, not reactively.
Why Québec Might Need New Towns
Major cities like Montreal, Québec, Gatineau and Laval are struggling to keep up with population growth and housing demand. According to the Fraser Institute, for every new housing unit delivered in Canada in 2023, there were 5.1 new residents. That same ratio was 4.9 in Québec for the same period. This means that the population increase largely outpaced housing stock increase, putting immense strain on housing affordability within Canada’s neoliberal market.
These trends have provided impetus for provincial and municipal authorities to attempt to address this gap and encourage the quick provision of affordable housing units. Many policy adjustments have taken place over the last decade to attempt to correct this trend. The Règlement pour une métropole mixte (RMM) implemented in 2019 by the municipal administration of Montréal, Québec’s largest city, was designed to mandate the provision of at least 20% of new developed dwellings as social housing and another 20% as affordable housing. However, according to the Montreal Economic Institute (IEDM), the bylaw’s inclusion requirements have increased development costs, driving higher prices overall. Only a small share of residents benefit from affordable units, cementing the inelastic nature of the market. This reflects a broader challenge: while well-intentioned, inclusionary zoning alone cannot overcome a structurally supply-constrained market.
Bill 31, passed by the National Assembly of Québec aimed to both enhance tenant protections and to accelerate housing projects by providing special approval powers to municipalities. Despite its attempt at incentivizing supply, many critics have argued that Bill 31 will provide more flexibility and tools to landlords, such as the right to refuse lease transfers. These tools could put upward pressure on rents, particularly in Montreal, where over two-thirds of private households are renters and lease transfers have long served as a safeguard against predatory increases. In effect, the bill may prioritize developer and landlord flexibility over long-term affordability. Despite these serious efforts at addressing the housing crisis, unaffordability continues to be a central problem in Québec society.
As young families are priced out of the urban core and suburban sprawl continues to spread unimpeded at considerable economic and ecological cost, could there not be benefits to decentralizing urban growth from the big cities and creating vibrant, revitalized regional economies? Are there opportunities to exploit underused transit corridors in favour of a form of development beyond the traditional TOD?
Considering the experience the western world has had with new towns, there is real potential in discussing the application of this strategy in Québec, especially in regards to regional equity and sustainability.
In order for a new town project to be fit for purpose and to build on the key learnings from previous experiences, special attention would have to be paid to site location, transportation integration, urban design principles, economic and social governance and feasibility.
Claude’s Commute
The work day has ended and Claude casually makes his way down to Lucien L’Allier station to board his train back home. He’s not fussed about the time because he knows that at peak hours, there's a new train to his destination every 2 minutes. Installing himself comfortably on one of the empty seats, Claude greets the passenger across from him and pulls out his tablet to catch up on the news. The electric train hums as it leaves the station, giving him a lovely view of the city centre.
After an efficient 40 min ride north, the train takes a slight curve ahead of the northern terminus and heads eastward for a short 5 minute trek to its destination, the new town of Villeneuve, Qc. From this distance, you barely realize that you’re approaching a dense, urban vibrant town of over 40 000 inhabitants. The indigenous trees, bushes, flowers and other plants seamlessly cover the man made structures, providing both shade and comfort.
The train slows down and stops at the town center. As he disembarks, Claude runs into his friend Lisa and they gladly catch up as they make their way to the exit. As an architect, Lisa reminds Claude how impressed she was with the construction of the train station, made with sustainable materials and design. She was particularly impressed with the indoor vegetal wall and how it was used to filter air and provide cooling without relying on energy.
Reaching the exit, Lisa asks Claude if he will take the shared bike service the municipality offers to get home. Claude replies that since it’s a beautiful day and a short distance, he’ll walk this time. The friends part ways and Claude cheerfully took the lilac-covered pathway towards his home. On his way he received a notification on his device. It was a reminder to vote on the latest proposal: maintaining the town’s car ban, and continuing funding for the park-and-ride stations and the ride-sharing service. Claude took note of it and asked his mobile assistant to remind him to vote later that day, preferably after supper. Looking around at the bustling coffee shops, restaurants, boutiques, and people freely walking and cycling through the car-free streets he’s reminded of where he lived 20 years ago. A congested, ever more expensive and deeply unjust metropolis, where community, empathy and solidarity were secondary to individualism and disdain. How far we’ve come, he thought, remembering the rent he used to pay and happy that his community housing today doesn't force him to sacrifice the welfare of his family.
On his right, a building seemed to reinforce his thoughts. On the top floor was Evan, an acquaintance, happily waving to him from his beautiful green terrasse connected to his one bedroom apartment. Claude noticed the small, quiet filtration system and remembered that Evan’s terrasse served as a green roof and a rainwater filtering system, for the 2 bedroom apartment below, between Evan’s and the coffee shop at street level. This apartment recently welcomed a new family with a young child, who will attend the primary school across the street behind the park. Claude will be happy to meet them at the next parent committee event.
The last ten minutes of his hour-long return home was the most pleasant for Claude. He got to look through the fresh fruits carefully placed outside the grocery store and pick out a few apples freshly picked from the grove at the edge of town. He remembered how his daughter, some years ago, at the young age of 12 had proposed at the public planning meeting to reserve a large plot of land within the city limits dedicated to growing and distributing fresh fruits and vegetables to residents. One of his proudest moments as a parent was when the public planning meeting adopted the proposal and engaged his daughter and her peers in the implementation process. As he crossed his home’s threshold, a bag of apples in hand, Claude was ready to start his real day, time with his family.
Risks and Caveats
Making Claude’s commute a reality won’t be easy or without obstacles, but it remains entirely realistic should there be the necessary political and social will. Having said this, Québec has explicit experience in both paradigm shifting visionary projects as well as optimism crushing white elephants. In new town projects, the risk of creating the latter rather than the former is not negligible. The Mirabel airport as well as the Olympic park are ever present examples of projects that were implemented at great cost with the noblest of intentions, but succumbed to poor execution, political intrigue and public apathy. How would Villeneuve be different? Could the admittedly massive pricetag associated with such an endeavour be offset by its net benefits, not unlike the incredible tangible and intangible benefits engendered by the unmitigated success of Expo67?
A further question worth asking is whether new towns might be too little, too late. Milton Keynes in the UK took about 25 years to come to fruition. With the skyrocketing costs of living and commodities increases, the stagnation and volatility of global economies and political instability of recent years, can we even commit to or afford such a long term project? One thing seems certain: a new towns strategy can’t replace short-term, targeted measures like smart densification and rent controls.
When Ebenezer Howard first described garden cities in the late 19th century as a modern alternative to the dense metropolis, he envisioned them as independent self contained and balanced communities where work and leisure would coexist. Despite this vision, many applications of his ideas ended up producing dormitory cities, places where people live and need to commute out of to work. Whether by design or due to economic factors, the result was often lifeless communities during the day and disengaged ones at night. The key here is not necessarily to infuse the new town with the necessary amount of jobs to make it self-reliant, but at least to maintain strong, well funded and efficient public transit routes connecting to workplaces, effectively removing the psychological barriers.
In this same vein, it is equally important to make sure that affordability, environmental sustainability and social justice remain at the centre of new town projects as these are their raison d’être. Community land trusts, public land and residential property ownership, as well as resident-led management initiatives need solid regulatory footing to avoid the same speculative investment trap that created the crisis in the first place. Also, although the idea of a new town is predicated on urban and architectural design that is sustainable, as well as eco-friendly construction practices, it is not unfair to note that it implies the development of previously untouched land. Carbon neutrality, indigenous consultation, and recycled or upcycled materials should be at the very heart of the project to maintain its viability. In today’s world, we already live in a context that accepts the risks of urban sprawl cannibalizing previously virgin land in an arguably speculation driven, environmentally unsustainable and inefficient manner. The environmental and economic costs of new towns are real, but they can be mitigated if the right priorities guide their design from the start.
Conclusion
The housing crisis remains deep and ongoing, fuelling social anxiety and widening the divide between the institutions tasked with addressing the issue and the people who depend on them. Existing solutions haven’t been enough and tinkering at the edges is no longer a viable strategy.
New towns aren’t a silver bullet either. But they are a serious, long-term idea worth putting forward, one that could offer a more sustainable, human-centred response to the urgent housing challenges we face.
Cities are living, breathing communities built over generations. If we’re talking about founding new ones, we can’t ignore the vision we hold for those who will inherit them.
What if, as a society, we chose something bolder for our children, a place where precarity, speculation, and competition over housing aren’t the norm?
What if Villeneuve became a reality? It may be fictional, but the forces that created it, public will, political courage, collective imagination, are real, and available to us.
Comments