Villages in Cities: Community Land Ownership, Cooperative Housing, and the Milton Parc Story

"As gentrification threatens to uproot neighbourhoods across the world, the flame of co-operative housing has been reignited. Meanwhile, community land ownership has the potential to turn the tide and put the destiny of our cities into the hands of residents. Villages in Cities takes us across North America to Montreal, Boston, Vermont, and Mississippi, presenting concrete examples of citizens taking back the land and claiming their right to secure housing. It also acts as a guidebook to contemporary urban struggles through fertile archival material from the Milton Parc struggle, which is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. Villages in Cities presents a succinct portrait of the problems facing the ownership of urban land and concrete strategies for communities to take back urban land from the market and the State. The story begins in Montreal in 1968, when word spread like wildfire of a developer's plan to demolish six blocks of the working class neighbourhood of Milton Parc. The developer envisioned enormous high-rises with luxury apartments, hotels, offices, and commercial space. It was a declaration of war, and the local community responded in kind. What followed was a David versus Goliath struggle that not only saved the Victorian and Edwardian heritage architecture from destruction but would more importantly defend the neighbourhood in perpetuity from gentrification through the creation of the Communauté Milton Parc: a massive non-profit co-operative and non-profit housing project on an urban land trust. With some 616 apartments self-managed by a strong community of around 1500 low and medium-income residents, it is a veritable village in the heart of the city."--Site web de l'éditeur.