This neighbourhood is the most densely populated area of Quebec, due to the large number of high-rise apartment towers built in the 1960s and 1970s.[9] The area is characterized by high-density residential housing and small businesses, typically owned and operated by immigrants living in the neighbourhood, concentrated at its core, with stately Victorian grey-stone row houses and beaux-arts styled apartment blocks at the edges of the neighbourhood. It is a primarily institutional neighbourhood, with a university, junior college, seminary, hospital and architecture museum among many private schools, colleges and technical schools.
Prior to Expo '67 and the Olympics, this neighbourhood was considered the city's second Gay Village (mostly by anglophones).[12]
Demographics
It is thus one of the more cosmopolitan neighbourhoods in the city, as well as being generally more English-speaking than the rest of Montreal. There is a sizeable population of Chinese-Canadians living in the area, so much so that part of the informally named Concordia Ghetto is also sometimes referred to as New Chinatown / Chinatown West. Much like Montreal's main Chinatown, it is pan-Asiatic, rather than uniquely Chinese.
The area is home to numerous small independently owned and operated restaurants, bars, bistros and cafés.
