Description
In Manufacturing Montreal Robert Lewis provides a detailed historical geographic account of a major North American city's industrial landscape from the beginnings of industrialization to the Great Depression. Challenging the traditional view that urban expansion due to industrial decentralization is a twentieth-century phenomenon, Lewis demonstrates that the process of industrial decentralization has been ongoing since the 1850s.
Lewis's 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, the move of factories to the urban fringe shaped the social geography of the city by creating working-class residential neighborhoods. A particular strength of the book is its 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.Reviews
"Lewis provides a convincing description of Montreal's industrial growth . . . [This volume] adds substantially to our knowledge of manufacturing in Montreal and also suggests novel theories that will be useful in studying industrial development in other North American cities."—Larry McNally, Technology and Culture"This is a useful book for understanding the complexities of industrial-capitalist transformation . . . We now have a fuller understanding of industrial decentralization in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Montreal."—Christina Burr, American Historical Review "A more meticulous analysis of the evidence about urban manufacturing than Lewis' is difficult to imagine . . . This book offers a rich view of Montreal between 1850 and 1929."—Peter G. Goheen, Journal of Interdisciplinary History "Rich in detail and thoroughly argued."—Kate Boyer, Environment and Planning "An admirable book that has the potential to make a significant contribution to our understanding of industrial decentralization. Lewis not only provides rich insights into the process which go far beyond what is available for any single city in this time period, but he also places the process in the larger context of the city, including utilities, infrastructure, and decision making. These other components are woven together to show how they all contributed to the process of industrial decentralization."—David R. Meyer, Brown University "[A]n empirical appraisal that adds an important examination of long-term industrial growth to the urban history of Montreal."—David Theodore, The Canadian Historical Review "This study is a very good introduction to the history of Montreal's manufacturing and highlights the specific character of its evolution. . . . By approaching the subject by industry instead of by industrial district, Lewis is able to give a better account of the emergence of new industrial districts on the urban fringe under the influence of major technological changes in production processes."—Pauline Desjardins, Industrial Archaeology "A highly detailed historical account of how a city changes in accordance with the economic expectations of its people and how those changes are intrinsically linked to space and place . . . Interesting and useful."—Paul J. Cech, The Pennsylvania Geographer "Lewis makes formidable theoretical contributions to economic, urban, and historical geography."—Christopher G. Boone, Historical Geography "A strong empirical study."—Jean-Francois Auger, Material Culture
Author Information
Robert Lewis is an associate professor of geography at the University of Toronto.
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