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“It’s your city, only you can save it!”: Save Montreal’s Grassroots Opposition to Urban Redevelopment

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“It’s your city, only you can save it!”: Save Montreal’s Grassroots Opposition to Urban Redevelopment

Perrin, Eliot (2016) “It’s your city, only you can save it!”: Save Montreal’s Grassroots Opposition to Urban Redevelopment. Masters thesis, Concordia University.

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Abstract

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the urban conservation group Save Montreal actively opposed the city’s high-modernist redevelopment. To date, their efforts have been studied within the context of heritage preservation and its contribution to evolving notions of local identity. While Save Montreal was undoubtedly concerned with the retention of structures considered historically significant its members did not characterize themselves as heritage preservationists. Rather, I argue that Save Montreal’s membership constructed their organization and campaigned so as to challenge the means and process by which development occurred in the city centre. My use of oral history as a primary method of analysis reveals the socio-economic and political motivations of the group while also serving to democratize urban history. Oral history also represents a valuable means by which to understand and contextualize urban conservation movements. While local in operation and outlook, Save Montreal’s 1973-1985 activist period paralleled postwar grassroots conservation movements in other North American cities.

Divisions:Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > History
Item Type:Thesis (Masters)
Authors:Perrin, Eliot
Institution:Concordia University
Degree Name:M.A.
Program:History
Date:May 2016
Thesis Supervisor(s):High, Steven
ID Code:981240
Deposited By: ELIOT PERRIN
Deposited On:07 Nov 2016 15:02
Last Modified:18 Jan 2018 17:52
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