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

fig. 3. bird’s eye view Of cité industrielle drAwn by tOny gArnier,
first Published in 1917. the city stAnds On A rOcky PlAteAu
next tO A vAlley with An imPOsing dAm. | tOny gArnier, une cité industrielle, 1917.
fig. 5. AeriAl view Of ArvidA frOm the sOuth lOOking nOrth,
shOrtly After the secOnd wOrld wAr. | riO tintO AlcAn (mOntreAl).
City off the world’s critical radar, the
history of its contribution to urban
design has also remained incomplete.
With recent works like The Company
Towns, Company Towns in the Americas,
Fordlandia and Duluth, U.S. Steel, and
the Forging of a Company Town 9 from
John S. Garner, John W. Reps, Margaret
Crawford, and Jean-Pierre Frey10 arriving
to enrich the critical corpus made up of
such 20 th century classics as The City in
History (1961) and The Making of Urban
America (1965), it seems like a good
time to revisit the adventure in architecture
and urban planning that was
JSSAC | JSÉAC 36 > N o 1 > 2011
Arvida, 11 the city created from scratch in
the Canadian backcountry in 1925 and
named from its founder’s names: ARthur
VIning DAvis, president of the Aluminum
Company of America and one of the last
of the industrial utopians.
Af ter Rober t Owen’s New L anark
(Scotland, c. 1800), which was added
to the UNESCO World Heritage List in
2001 for having seen “the construction
not only of well designed and equipped
workers’ housing but also public buildings
designed to [address] their spiritual
as well as their physical needs,” 12 the
Lucie K. Morisset > aNalysis | aNalyse
fig. 4. the Oldest street in ArvidA, OriginAlly cAlled rue rAdin, nOw knOwn
As lA trAverse, where the city’s first hOuses were built in 1926,
seen ArOund 1930. | ville de sAguenAy.
fig. 6. residentiAl district Of cité industrielle. | tOny gArnier, une cité industrielle, 1917.
industrial era gave new impetus to the
age-old quest for living environments
conducive to human fulfilment. As such,
Tony Garnier belongs to a long line of
thinkers stretching back to Hippodamos
of Milet and Thomas More. This is the
context in which our article intends to
situate both the “cité neuve” of Arvida
and Garnier’s Cité Industrielle—mirror
images in the history of urban planning.
Indeed, the utopia given modern graphic
form by Cité Industrielle seems to have
developed and taken root in a unique
(and tangible) way in Arvida, which in
turn can only be properly understood in
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