City Scout Montreal Insights
Updated: 2 days ago
City building requires community building. That’s why the City Scout program brings together downtown stakeholders to create opportunities for high-impact learning, peer-to-peer connection and concrete takeaways that build momentum and advance our work in a specific project area related to downtown. This year’s program focused on play and activation, aligned with the Downtown Area Plan’s recommendation to focus on play to spark catalytic investment in our center city.
But what does a downtown built around play actually look like? In early September, the 2026 City Scout program held in Montreal, Quebec, brought together 72 Denver leaders to study world-class examples of play in urban contexts and learn how investing in the cultural and creative ecosystems can create solid foundations for downtown vibrancy and resiliency.
This program was structured around three Learning Lenses: clearly defined areas of inquiry that connect the realities of our host city to the strategic challenges and opportunities facing Downtown Denver. These lenses guided our site visits, conversations and on-the-ground experiences, ensuring the program produced actionable insights to inform decision making, investment, and collaboration upon return. In Montreal, we focused on:
Investing in the Cultural Ecosystem Montreal has created an export of creativity by investing in a local ecosystem of artists, fabricators and partners to bring public art and placemaking to life in city streets. This cultural ecosystem is so healthy that Montreal studios refer to each other as "co-petitors" vs competitors. How can we foster similar investment, partnership and collaboration in Downtown Denver?
Expanding the Definition of Play Access to play and culture can sometimes be impacted by our definition of each. Montreal has embraced play as part of their broader cultural infrastructure and created interdisciplinary partnerships to bring play to public spaces for all ages in new and exciting ways. How might Denver similarly prioritize play in public space in alignment with the goals of the 2024 Downtown Area Plan?
Downtown as a Venue Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles transformed a former red-light district into a premier public event and arts district, supported by flexible, state-of-the-art infrastructure and coordinated district services. Today, it hosts more than 80 festivals each year and attracts vibrant, year-round activation. How can Denver creatively reimagine downtown public spaces as destinations and venues to support cultural expression, preservation and community life?
These learning lenses guided program content, from keynote speeches to group tours and discussions, and helped to inform the initial takeaways and insights gained from the experiential program.
Our takeaways were powerful and timely for Downtown:
Play is an economic development strategy, not an amenity
Denver has invested in live and work for decades, but we’ve never funded play with similar intention – even though it’s the one giving people a reason to come downtown today.
Montreal’s status as a globally renowned leader in activation, public space design and placemaking did not develop overnight. From innovative lighting in entertainment districts to evolving programming in public spaces, a range of pilot projects have tested, iterated and refined new ideas around play and cultural infrastructure in downtown Montreal. Some pilot projects were wildly successful; others were not. Through the process, Montrealers learned that it’s best to try, fail and keep trying instead of aiming for perfection on the first attempt.
Most importantly, they learned they needed to create space and permission for people to experiment while being persistent in evaluating measures of success.
Play is a tool; connection is the point
16 Live's silent disco, held this summer at Glenarm Plaza, not only attracted dancers, but also an audience who stood at the edges and watched. They weren’t playing, but they were still connecting. How can downtown become a destination connecting friends, families and locals, as well as workers?
In districts like the Quartier des Spectacles, community and civic leaders observed and studied existing spaces to understand how people currently use – and view – the space before implementing new projects and activations. They sought to understand the needs, behaviors and perspectives of the people already using the space and engaged its evolution as a downtown entertainment district.
Crucially, Montreal organizations deploy art and activation with a measurable goal of people gathering and interacting with each other.
Start small and often
Public art is easy, but performance has to happen again and again before it starts to take on a life of its own. Do it once, and the second time is easier – until it stops being programming and becomes a tradition. That’s how you build muscle memory for play.
Montreal understands that great art and activation can grow from strong, cross-sector relationships. Organizations like the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership and La Piscine support creatives in multiple ways, from supportive business incubator programs to removing barriers to activate public spaces.
We can learn a lesson from Montreal in how they have created streamlined processes for events and activations through cross-sector partnerships. They identified locations with less rules, or partners open to flexible uses of space that they control. They worked together to create modular, basic infrastructure that helps to make event implementation easier. What are opportunities in Denver to start small and often to remove barriers for creatives?
A signature element of the City Scout program is a steadfast focus on tangible outcomes and progress towards implementation of the Downtown Area Plan. Following the program in Montreal, which concluded in early-September, the Downtown Denver Partnership is supporting community conversations around near-term activations in Downtown and a long-term strategy for arts, culture and play within our center city.
Tune in to the Challenger Cities Podcast (EP105: Coming to Play with the Downtown Denver Partnership) for a deep dive on the program experience and an interview with Kourtny Garret, President & CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership on why play is critically imporatant to Downtown Denver. Listen or read the full article here.
