Join the conference organisers and TICCIH board members for a welcome cocktail and some festive words of introduction, in the former forge of the École technique de Montréal, founded in 1909, now part of the Université du Québec à Montréal campus.

This session presents case studies and policy reviews that contribute to ongoing debate and international dialogue on the role of planning systems and conservation practices in addressing the challenges of citizen engagement—conserving local interests, place attachments alongside physical remnants of industrial heritage. Over the past half century, we have witnessed the development and changing focuses of urban planning and conservation discourses addressing industrial heritage. Relevant p...

Industrialization processes have been global from their very beginning. However, their interpretation still tends to be limited to specific locations or regions, and to specific time periods. Regularly, for example, it is stated that the industrial revolution started in Europe, from where it spread to the world, supposedly bringing technological and social progress to „less developed“ countries. Earlier periods of technology and knowledge transfer processes, that were already in place in t...

It is widely accepted that understanding a historic place is a critical first step to guide subsequent management and conservation. Industrial sites present a number of challenges as understanding their form, function, design, boundaries, and conservation often requires a high degree of technical expertise and experience. In Canada, gaining this expertise and information sharing is hampered by a limited number of institutions offering training in industrial archaeology and the lack of a na...

This session focuses on company towns from the perspective of urban planning. “Company towns” are here defined as single-enterprise planned communities, usually centered around a single industry, where a company commissions an urban plan, builds housing for its workers, and sets up recreational, commercial, institutional or community facilities. While these are now endangered by a second wave of deindustrialization, we observe that, aside studies or monographs of individual towns that popu...

As a "continent” country, in which industrialization began as early as the 19th century, Canada has seen through deindustrialization and urban redevelopment, parts of this heritage have been either altered or destroyed. Yet, Canada still possesses a very significant industrial heritage. With Canada being a confederation, approaches to the protection and the safeguard of its industrial heritage differs throughout the provinces and territories of the country. The same is true of i...