PUBLIC MARKS with tag mileend

Try to find a small, independent bookstore in a high rent neighborhood, and you’ll likely be disappointed even if the folks who live nearby are great readers. That’s because bookstores have very small—sometime non-existent—profit margins.

This book is about lot #2334609, a piece of land known locally as the Maguire Meadow, one of the last undeveloped spaces in the Mile End neighborhood in the Plateau Mont Royal, in Montreal.

Lot #2334609 is a terrain vague — owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway, owned by the City of Montreal as of June 2009, used and cherished by the community, the only green space in the Mile End. People feel free in this space. They don’t ask for permission to picnic, grow things, create art, or gather around a campfire. It’s open and wild, unlike most city parks.

To outsiders, it may look like an abandoned field. But, as you will read here, the community has appropriated this space and wants a say in how it will be developed. Development is scheduled for 2009-2010, as part of the city’s $9-million revitalization of the neighborhood.

We are looking for a print designer to create a 40-70 page book to be published in April 2009. The book will document Sprout Out Loud! / Le Pouvoir Aux Pousses! (a Montreal land reclamation art project) as well as contain contributions from the community about a controversial piece of land belonging to Canadian Pacific Railway.