Manufacturing Montreal: The Making of an Industrial Landscape, 1850-1930

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Manufacturing Montreal: The Making of an Industrial Landscape, 1850-1930
Abstract
The author outlines the historical geographic account of Montreal’s industrial landscape from the beginnings of industrialization in the 1850s to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Challenging the traditional view that urban expansion due to industrial decentralization was a twentieth-century phenomenon, the author demonstrates that the process of industrial decentralization has been ongoing since the 1850s. His overall thesis is that the economic and social imperatives underlying industrial capitalism periodically reshaped the manufacturing geography of Montreal, as it did in many other North American cities. Time and again, he asserts, the move of factories to the urban fringe shaped the social geography of the city by creating working-class residential neighborhoods. Using the municipal tax assessment rolls, the author establishes the dynamics of Montreal’s industrial geography, focusing on selected industries (clothing, metal, cotton and baking) and industrial districts (Saint Ann and Saint-Henri). The author offers a detailed examination of the role that utilities, transportation, technological change, investment, political control of land use, and labor markets had in the manufacturing of Montreal's factory districts.
Place
Baltimore, MD
Publisher
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Date
2000
# of Pages
336p.
Language
en
ISBN
978-0-8018-6349-3
Citation
Lewis, Robert D. Manufacturing Montreal: The Making of an Industrial Landscape, 1850-1930. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
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