Montréal is a deep market of 1,762,949 people, 1st of 23 in Quebec and about 36.6% of the provincial roster. Feasibility work in Montréal behaves differently from work in Montréal: fewer precedents, slower comparables, and a Montréal bylaw often written for a smaller city than the one standing today.

Nationally Montréal sits 2nd of the 134 Canadian markets in this roster and is one of 15 tier-1 markets. Against Montréal, Montréal runs at 1.00× the population, which is the honest discount to apply when someone hands a Montréal file an absorption assumption borrowed from the provincial leader.

The nearest Quebec neighbours by size are no larger provincial peer above Montréal and Québec City below it. When Montréal comparables run thin — and in a market of 1,762,949 they usually do — those are the files to pull first, since the governing statute is identical.

Outside Quebec, the closest tier-1 analogues to Montréal are Calgary, AB, Ottawa, ON, Edmonton, AB. Comparing Montréal to those markets is usually more instructive than comparing it to the nearest city by driving distance, because bylaw generosity follows market size and provincial statute far more reliably than geography.

Montréal has zero promoted zone rows today. The page stays fully usable — calculator, printable summary and deal handoff all work — but Montréal is marked noindex and excluded from the sitemap, because a page with no verified local figure has no business competing in search.

The Montréal rule is identical in all 134 markets: a page is indexable only when the tier gate allows the pair and at least one promoted row backs it. Montréal is tier 1, which admits the full product set.

Corrections on Montréal are welcome and fast. If a figure here is stale, send the Ville de Montréal — Urbanisme page and it gets re-read; the observation date on each Montréal row states exactly how old the reading is, which is more than most zoning summaries will admit.

We do not claim complete Montréal coverage and will not fake it. Reviewed Montréal rows accumulate in order of practical relevance, and the absence of a Montréal code here means it has not been read yet — not that it does not exist.

The legal chain in Quebec runs la Loi sur l'aménagement et l'urbanisme → un plan d'urbanisme → un règlement de zonage, administered in Montréal by Ville de Montréal — Urbanisme. Nothing can be permitted as of right in Montréal that the plan does not already contemplate, which is why the fastest feasibility read is the Montréal plan designation, not the zone code.

Where un règlement de zonage does not permit the massing a Montréal site can physically hold, the paths are a dérogation mineure or a full rezoning, and disputes land at the borough or municipal council, with registry and referendum steps for certain amendments. Treat the Montréal approval route as a line item rather than a footnote: it drives interest carry, option length and the credibility of the exit.

None of this is uniform inside Montréal. Heritage designations, site-specific exceptions, holding provisions and area overlays sit on top of the base zone and routinely change the answer for one Montréal parcel while leaving its neighbours untouched. Every figure published here is a base-zone figure unless the Montréal source note says otherwise.

Above Ville de Montréal — Urbanisme sits Quebec, and above the Montréal bylaw sits la Loi sur l'aménagement et l'urbanisme. When the province moves, Montréal follows on its own schedule; assume the printed Montréal text is the current law only after checking the date on it.

The calculator on this page answers one question for a Montréal site: which constraint binds first. It computes the density ceiling as lot area × FSR, then the physical ceiling as the buildable footprint — Montréal lot area net of setbacks, capped by coverage — times the storeys the height limit allows. The smaller governs, and the tool names it for the Montréal inputs you enter.

Worked through on a reference 28,000 sf Montréal lot at 2.5 FSR — an illustration, not a Montréal figure — the density ceiling is 70,000 sf of gross floor area, roughly 74 units at an 85% efficiency and 800 sf average. Whether Montréal height and setbacks actually allow that plate is the second half of the question, and the answer is parcel-specific.

Knowing what binds tells a Montréal team what to ask for: storeys and floor-to-floor where height governs, density where FSR governs. In Montréal, where approvals run through Ville de Montréal — Urbanisme and contested outcomes reach the borough or municipal council, with registry and referendum steps for certain amendments, a misaimed request costs a cycle.

The ratio is the third lever on a Montréal site. Entered here it becomes a visible Montréal stall count rather than a buried cost line. Many Quebec bylaws still carry ratios written for a different era of car ownership, which makes the reduction request one of the highest-return conversations a Montréal applicant can have.

A note on vocabulary, because Quebec does not use the same words as every province. Floor space ratio, floor area ratio and density index all describe the same Montréal relationship — permitted floor area divided by lot area — and Ville de Montréal — Urbanisme may use any of them in un règlement de zonage.

Whether Ville de Montréal — Urbanisme caps Montréal height by metres, storeys, or an angular envelope changes the achievable count. Enter the Montréal limit as the bylaw states it and set floor-to-floor to match the construction type you actually intend.

Setbacks and coverage interact in ways that surprise people new to Montréal. On a narrow Montréal lot, side yards can consume enough width that coverage never binds at all; on a deep one, coverage binds long before the setbacks do.

The Montréal unit count falls out of GFA divided by average unit size after an efficiency factor, and the parking obligation follows from there. It is the shortest chain on the page and the one where a careless Montréal assumption does the most damage.

Maximum density is not the Montréal objective. Ville de Montréal — Urbanisme may permit a plate the Montréal market cannot absorb, and building to the ceiling in a 1,762,949-person market is how a compliant project becomes an unsellable one.

Phasing is the usual answer in a market the size of Montréal. Splitting an envelope across stages keeps Montréal exposure proportional to demonstrated absorption, at the cost of losing some efficiency Montréal projects can rely on.

Peers listed for Montréal are chosen by tier and population, not proximity. They are the fastest available check on whether a Montréal density assumption is ordinary or ambitious.

Risk in Montréal concentrates at the edges of the data. A base-zone figure that is correct citywide can be wrong on the specific Montréal parcel, and the difference usually shows up as a schedule or an overlay rather than a change to the Montréal zone code itself.

Scale changes the risk profile too. In a market of 1,762,949, a single mispriced Montréal site is a larger share of the year than the same error would be in Montréal, and the pool of buyers willing to absorb an entitlement mistake in Montréal is correspondingly smaller.

Treat Montréal output here as a screening tool. Verification with Ville de Montréal — Urbanisme — and, where the file warrants it, a Quebec planning professional — remains the step that carries legal weight.

The method behind the Montréal page is deliberately boring. Population and rank come from the census roster shared by all 134 markets; the statutory chain comes from la Loi sur l'aménagement et l'urbanisme; and the Montréal regulatory figures, when any exist, come from a reviewer reading an Ville de Montréal — Urbanisme page and stamping the date.

The Montréal gate is binary and unsentimental: reviewed and dated, or absent. There is no partially trusted middle state, which is why a Montréal figure you see here can be traced to a document in one click.

Provenance labels appear next to Montréal outputs for a reason. Observed means a reviewer read it off an Ville de Montréal — Urbanisme document on a stated date; modelled means the calculator derived it from your inputs. Conflating the two is how a Montréal estimate ends up quoted as a regulation.