Industrialisation and its urban impact : morphological analysis of the pulp and paper industrial landscape in Quebec (1880-1930)

Since the end of the 19th century, the exploitation of large forests and hydrological reserve propelled the industrial development in Quebec, notably the pulp and paper sector. The morphological impact affected several scales of infrastructure: regional transportation networks, industrial sites and plants design, the urbanisation of new cities and neighbourhoods. This paper delineates the relationship between the extraction of resources, the need to attract labour and therefore the nature of the resulting urban development. Some companies acted as developers and bankers, and ensured that workers and their families were housed, entertained, cared for and educated. Other sites display less organised development where, beyond the industrial compound, the urban growth relied on local actors and practices. The research addresses the morphological characteristics developed between the global requirements of an industry tailored to serve the international markets and the constraints and potential of specific sites. In the context of actual decline, the future of theses industrial sites, generally strategically located in their respective urban context, raised the issue of their recycling when the vacated infrastructure remains part of the collective industrial heritage. The prior territorial analysis covers all 125 paper mills built in Quebec between 1805 and 2015. Consequently, a sample of 16 mills provides the cases for an urban typo-morphological analysis. The result provides the facts about urban impact of mills on neighbouring settlements. Il also addresses the potential regeneration of both underused industrial plots and towns