'à es us e ct n s, es - Sexton Digtial Initiatives - Dalhousie University

Architectural and urban historian LuCie K.
MOriSSet is a professor in the Department of
urban and tourism studies at université du Québec
à Montréal. She is a member of the university's
institut du patrimoine, associate to the Canada
research Chair on urban Heritage and a researcher
with Centre interuniversitaire d'études sur les
lettres, les arts et les traditions. Following on
her work on the hermeneutics of built landscape
and urban representations, her current research
focuses on Quebec's patrimonial memory and the
history of the province's heritage. She is currently
finishing up a new monograph on Arvida for Presses
de l'université du Québec.
fig. 1. One Of the Oldest streets in ArvidA, in the heArt Of “the city built in 135 dAys,” bOulevArd tAschereAu,
nOw knOwn As du sAguenAy. | PhOtOgrAPh by guillAume st-JeAn.
JSSAC | JSÉAC 36 > N o 1 > 2011 > 3-40
analYsis | analYse
NoN-FictioN Utopia
arvida, cité industrielle Made Real 1
> Lucie K. Morisset
Une cité industrielle, that milestone
in Western architectural and urban
history, was conceived by Tony Garnier
in the first decades of the 20 th century.
The book was first published in
1917 and went on to enjoy a phenomenal
critical reception (fig. 3). Pevsner
(Pioneers in the Modern Movement),
Banham (Theory and Design in the
First Machine Age), Giedion (Space,
Time and Architecture), and Alexander
(A City is Not a Tree) have enshrined it
as a classic in the evolution of urban
planning: “Projet de cité idéale le plus
complet depuis les Salines de Chaux”
[the Saltworks of Chaux, published in
L’architecture considérée sous le rap‑
port de l’art, des mœurs et de la législa‑
tion] de Ledoux, (1804) 2 Cité Industrielle
“practically provided a blueprint for a
new type of urban centre designed
around the possibilities of contemporary
technology, new construction methods
and efficient transportation.” 3 In
the years immediately following its publication
and before a series of reprints
later in the century, cité was noted in
1919 by Le Corbusier, 4 but seems to have
been most carefully considered in a
1926 article in La construction moderne,
in which Pierre Bourgeix noted its philosophy
of urban design. 5 However, it is
as an archetypal precursor to integrated
planning, 6 an approach that took hold
in the wake of the Athens Charter (published
in 1941), that Garnier’s influence
has most readily been acknowledged.
European researchers, having noted a
citation of Garnier by Lewis Mumford,
concluded that the Cité Industrielle
must have served as a model for the
development of the Hiwassee Valley by
3