Productive gentrification in the Mile-Ex neighbourhood of Montreal, Canada: exploring the role of the state in remaking urban industrial clusters

Abstract

The Mile-Ex district of Montreal, Canada – an inner-city manufacturing cluster – is experiencing an influx of new knowledge-based firms, which in addition to residential developments threatens to displace current manufacturing firms. This study examines the competition over industrial space and how state strategies, particularly at the scale of the City, are enabling this trend. Drawing on interviews with local stakeholders and planners, a review of policy documents and field observations, we seek to expand on a nascent literature exploring the gentrification of manufacturing spaces and shed light on the different mechanisms by which the state mediates neighbourhood change.

Keywords:

• productive gentrification
• manufacturing
• creative city strategies
• Montreal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The range of manufacturers interviewed was three furniture manufacturers, three textile manufacturers, a brewer, a coffee roaster, and a cabinet maker. All of the manufacturers were small-scale, employing 20 people or less, which is representative of the sector in this neighbourhood.

2. Hackworth and Smith (2001) propose a gentrification wave model to provide a framework through which to understand temporal changes in gentrification that correspond with larger economic and political restructuring. The current wave, characterized by the interventionist state, is the third-wave, and it follows the first wave, where gentrification is state-led but still quite sporadic, and a second wave, where gentrification is more common-place and the state adopts a laissez-faire role.

3. Such initiatives contrast with state efforts to chase ‘smokestacks’ (i.e. large-scale factories) during the managerial era (1940s to 1970s).

4. The 2008 closure of one of Mile-Ex’s largest companies, Main Knitting with two adjacent factories on Rue Saint-Urbain, exemplifies this decline and reduced the employment in the district by approximately 2000 jobs (Bergeron, 2014).

5. There are 19 Boroughs that constitute the City of Montreal.

6. To date, the project has received $60 million in provincial and federal funding and an additional $60 million from the City for infrastructure development and brownfield remediation, with local officials and university representatives hoping that it will entice people to move nearby and support the development of a creative community (‘Green light…’ 2009; Campus Montreal, 2014).

7. Recent media attention includes the Vogue magazine article and an online article which ranked Mile-Ex and neighbouring Mile End as the coolest neighbourhoods in the world in 2017, ahead of neighbourhoods of Los Angeles and Stockholm which ranked second and third place, respectively (How I Travel, 2016).

8. A nonprofit advocacy organization, Made in Montreal (www.madeinmontreal.com), has started to undertake such an analyses for other neighbourhoods, but further funds and supports are needed to extend such a research survey citywide, including the Mile-Ex district.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the FRQSC Programme de regroupements stratégiques, Avril 2014–Mars 2020 [178766].