You may know of St Urbain from the pages of The Street and St. Urbain's Horseman in which Mordecai Richler mapped his vision of a spirited immigrant neighborhood here in Montreal.

60 years down the road, St.Urbain has changed. It's still 99% residential but now gives way to other visions that make eyes water and lungs fluff

Even if the history seems to be getting lost in the rush, or somehow less likely, St. Urbain remains a place not without incident.

I know few people among the thousands that occupy St. Urbain but I imagine that most are like me in the following ways: They try not to breathe too deeply. They certainly don't linger long to chat, owing to the difficulty being heard above the din They feel intimidated standing on the sidewalk. They worry about the dangers of their children getting hit. They usually hurry indoors where they mostly keep their windows closed to ward away the noise and dark dust.

Residents agree that the street has lost a lot of its local character and is fast becoming something of an undifferentiated space as sidewalks are increasingly abandoned. Studies show that with fewer distractions, people zipping by in their cars feel free to go that much faster, becoming part of an entrenching cycle. In this regard, St. Urbain serves as a local metaphor for the global reality of many city streets, where most people make their home

My friend downstairs points me in the direction of David who has the distinction of being the longest resident of the street. David has lived here for over 50 years. Though both David and I like to get out and about, we have never previously met. In fact, I do not recall having ever seen him in the five years we've lived facing each other.

David has seen community come and go. He says that once upon a time everybody knew everybody. I invite him in for a chat where he quietly describes another place, a kind of Balconville, with horse power. He says he knows few of his neighbors these days. In a sense the street used to be much bigger, much longer, though the odometer reading remains the same. What has changed is the time people have got and the time they haven't got and the speed they feel compelled to go.

The other day an urban planner showed me a map of Montreal and traced the line of St.Urbain. He described it as an artery vital to the circulation of the city, leading to the heart of downtown. Planners and politicians, seem to understand the city as an anatomical body that must exercise at speed to achieve full muscle tone. It's the mantra of progress, right? And the human body must keep up, or else take a back seat. The necessity to breathe, rest and reflect is increasingly squeezed into classes, workshops, therapy sessions and runs, rather than just deeply doing nothing. "If you can't beat 'em then join 'em," is a popular aphorism, possibly explaining why I read that personal car ownership has risen roughly 35% in the last 10 years.

Regarding the map of Montreal , I sense the truth in that view of the map fast becoming the territory. I've met a few residents on the street who believe fast car routes to the downtown deliver an essential freedom, who can't see why this street should not deliver too. You don't need to have a car to think like that either, even when you know that most of these cars and trucks are coming from the burbs and further afield. What`s to stop them? Toxic emissions are mostly invisible after all. You can see a purplish haze of particulates on hot days. But you can't see carbon monoxide, nitrogen and sulfur dioxides. You can hear them though as ambulance sirens career by delivering victims to the two hospitals on the street. Nitrogen dioxide pollution is apparently responsible for 60% of hospital admissions due to cardio respiratory problems.

I guess it's difficult for us to imagine a different kind of city. It's surely difficult to feel past the numbing cascade of car commercials following the movement of mustangs, broncos, jaguars, rams, cobras, stingrays, preternaturally streaming silently through ribbons of empty road and unfettered nature. Some days Car and Nature even appear to have coupled to deliver a nearly natural hybrid.

I asked David what he reckons Mordecai Richler would have made of the street now . He replied that Mordecai was radical back then and would not have liked the state it's in. Well, many of us here on St. Urbain, radical or not, fail to feel fully at home inside this inner city skin. We call ourselves The St. Urbain Open Windows Movement . Nothing complicated about us, we just want to open our windows and breathe easier. At times, I can't help but wonder why everyone doesn't instantly share my point of view.

Other times I don`t wonder but despair at my own capacity for distraction. Paul Virilio refers to the earth as "that phantom limb". I think of the countless emissions, visions, scopes, projections, webcams, virtual horizons and tele-everything blotting out the life size view from my doorstep. With all this instantaneous action and imported reaction at the press of a button, the value of human movement is surely and rapidly diminishing. Is it any wonder you can find yourself feeling or fearing a crisis of inertia? Is it any wonder we readily rush to put a pleasant face on things…just for a little light relief?

…Then there's trompe l'oeil, the allure of special effects…and other dreams