Not everyone considered the Îlot Fleurie a community space to be preserved. In fact, many contractors would dump their waste and even clean their cement mixers there! The man behind the project, Louis Fortier, and a team of volunteers had to clean up the site over and over again. In this photo, he is cleaning up piles of sand and broken asphalt.

1974 - 2012

Decline and revitalization of the downtown Saint-Roch district

The Saint-Roch district in downtown Québec City faced the same destiny as many other North American urban centres. At the end of the 1960s, the commercial artery in the Saint-Roch district gradually emptied as new shopping centres sprung up in the suburbs. To counter the decline of this downtown area, an open-air mall, the Mail Saint-Roch, was inaugurated in 1968 on Saint-Joseph Street. In 1974, more than a kilometre of the mall was covered with a roof. However, popular preference for suburban shopping soon made the area obsolete. In the 1990s and 2000s, a new effort of innovative architectural and social initiatives was made to revitalize this neglected downtown area.

Cleaning up the Îlot Fleurie

Raynald Lavoie Not everyone considered the Îlot Fleurie a community space to be preserved. In fact, many contractors would dump their waste and even clean their cement mixers there! The man behind the project, Louis Fortier, and a team of volunteers had to clean up the site over and over again. In this photo, he is cleaning up piles of sand and broken asphalt.

Chronoscope Do you have any memories of that time? (unilingual French for a limited time)

Depicted period: 1993

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