Festivals and Events as Everyday Life in Montreal’s Entertainment District

Abstract

Cities struggle to balance vitality and livability, and noise is at the center of many of these debates. Preconceived ideas on the sonic expectations and needs of groups of city users can be misleading, particularly in entertainment districts such as the Quartier des Spectacles in Montreal (CA). We investigated what life was like in QDS for its year-round users during the 2019 festival season (the last before the COVID-19 pandemic), building on insights from residents, workers and visitors collected through online surveys. Respondents described an overall positive view of their district marked by a diversity of experiences and frustrations, with subtle intragroup differences between residents and workers. Age was an important variable framing these experiences, but unexpectedly, older respondents enjoyed their life in QDS just as much as younger users. Dissatisfaction with residing or working in QDS was rarely geared toward the frequency or loudness of festivals, but rather to other everyday life situations. Emergent from the data, we argued for the development of soundscape personas to refer to typologies of users whose experiences differ in terms of sonic priorities and evaluations. Our findings could inform strategies for organizing large events in urban areas, maintaining an awareness of diversity of users.