Understanding the Built Form of Industrialization along the Lachine Canal in Montreal

Abstract

This article tracks the morphogenesis of one of the birthplaces of Canadian industry: the Lachine Canal corridor in Montreal. The authors propose a reading of the evolution of the artifacts and spatial forms to be found along the canal from its construction starting in 1819. This work complements the history of Montreal's industrialization and working-class communities by offering the untold story of a piece of the city whose birth and long sedimentation of built forms testifies to the emergence, peak, and decline of a new industrial order. The urbanization of the Lachine Canal corridor is, we argue, the result of a complex dialectic between a residential spatial order of the faubourg and a first- and second-generation industrial spatial order. Accordingly, the fine folds and articulations of domestic space and the sidewalks, streets, and church steps that are the sites of socialization and exchange succeed, or have imposed upon them a divided space organized by the flows of goods, materials, and energy destined to serve the industrial machine. The urban tissues, residential and industrial, today testify through their artifacts and spatial configurations to the historical conditions that saw them created and transformed.Cet article trace la morphogenèse de l’un des berceaux de l’industrialisation canadienne : le corridor du canal Lachine à Montréal. Les auteurs livrent une première lecture de l’évolution des artefacts et des formes spatiales qui se déploient de part et d’autre du canal, depuis sa construction à compter de 1819. À l’histoire de l’industrialisation et à celle des communautés ouvrières des abords du canal Lachine, se superpose ici une histoire inédite, celle d’un morceau de ville dont la genèse et la lente sédimentation des formes bâties témoignent et enregistrent l’impact de l’émergence, de l’apogée et du déclin du nouvel ordre économique industriel. Nous démontrerons que l’urbanisation du corridor du canal Lachine est le fruit d’une dialectique complexe entre un ordre spatial résidentiel de faubourg et un ordre spatial industriel de première et seconde moutures. Ainsi, aux tissages et modes d’articulation fins des espaces domestiques et de leurs espaces contigus de socialisation et d’échange que sont les trottoirs, rues et autres parvis d’église, succède ou se superpose un espace divisé et organisé en fonction des flux, tantôt de matériaux et de biens, tantôt d’énergie, qui sont destinés à alimenter la machine industrielle. Les tissus urbains, résidentiels comme industriels, livrent aujourd’hui le témoignage, en dur dans les artefacts, ou en creux, dans les configurations spatiales, des conditions historiques qui les ont vues naître et se transformer

Heritage and the Regeneration of Urban Brownfields: Insights on Public Perception in Tehran, Iran

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