‘Born in an atomic test tube’: landscapes of cyclonic development at Uranium City, Saskatchewan

Abstract

Drawing together insights from neo-

Nuclear Avenue: “Cyclonic Development”, Abandonment, and Relations in Uranium City, Canada

“…Though subsequent scholarship has drawn significant attention to Innis and cyclonic development, the concept in Innis's own work is nascent. One would be hard pressed to find a clear, cogent discussion in his writing that develops a theoretical viewpoint, yet the metaphor of cyclonic development has nevertheless caught on in subsequent scholarship (Neill 1972;Stamps 1995;Keeling 2010;Walby 2017). Environmental historian Arn Keeling is especially important to our discussion because he addresses Uranium City specifically in terms of cyclonic development, which is further taken up in Walby's recent essay.…”

Regional development in a resource production system: long distance commuting, population growth, and wealth redistribution in the Western Australia Goldfields

“…Altman, ; Gunton, ; Hayter, ; ; Tonts et al , ; Watkins, ; Wellstead, ). Sufficient economic diversification outside of resource production is seen as critical to the economic health of communities, mitigating the inherit instability and vulnerability of single resource communities to downsizing and closures (Gunton, ; Hayter, ; Keeling, ). Such diversification is thought to occur when investment in, and establishment of, demand linkages are facilitated by the activities of small business entrepreneurs living in regional communities (Walker, ) and may also be inhibited by the quick exportation of extracted resources from peripheral regions to the urban core (Hayter and Barnes, ).…”

“…Petrov (, p. 61) stated that the economic, social, political and cultural (etc) distance of resource towns from the cores of their respective urban systems made them ‘less integrated, more exploited, and isolated from the rest of the system’. Keeling (, p. 247) conjectured that efforts to guard against subsequent uneven regional development by attracting stable communities are subject to conflicting ‘political and practical difficulties’ which reinforced the ‘instability and inequality’ of a staples economy.…”

“…The precarious nature of peripheral single‐resource towns has attracted a range of ‘boom/bust’ and ‘cyclonic’ metaphors relating to the tenuous nature of their development trajectories, reliance on exploitative cruelty, and uncertainty of global commodity markets (Hayter, ; Keeling, ; Lawrie et al , ; Markey et al , ; McDonagh, ). Such towns stand at the frontier of nation‐building, providing a basing point for labour and capital flows.…”

Environmental Justice Goes Underground? Historical Notes from Canada's Northern Mining Frontier

“…After numerous rebuffs, the community finally secured an agreement with the Canadian government to undertake joint historical, scientific, and epidemiological studies to determine the impact of uranium mining in its territory. 1 These reports, and testimony by Dene people, recounted the advent of radium and uranium mining in the region in the 1930s, including the development of the mine, an ore concentration facility, transportation network, and the service town of Port Radium. Although the mine closed briefly in 1940 in response to collapsing radium prices, it reopened in 1942 and was subsequently nationalized by the Canadian government in 1944 to secure uranium supplies for the Allied atomic bomb project.…”