Architecture and urban planning
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Because of its history and its development, the regional urban planning and the architectural landscape is quite rich in contrasts, showing two main typologies of development.
Rural and agricultural settlement[edit]
The agricultural development of northern Abitibi and the northern part of Témiscamingue by a relatively homogeneous population of French Canadian Catholic settlers has introduced a mainly rural land development. There, small towns, gravitating around a low density node generally composed of a wooden Roman Catholic church, an elementary school and few houses spread over the territory, according to an orthogonal division on the land, with rectangular parcels. Those small towns are gravitating themselves around a larger city, as La Sarre, Amos, Macamic and Ville-Marie, where major institutions are established. If small towns might seem more or less vernacular, major cities are often more planned and influenced by British urban planning, with sometime an orthogonal grid with lane network.
Ukrainian church in Val-d'Or
Because of their central location, main architectural elements are also on those cities. For instance, the Cathedral of Sainte-Thérèse d'Avila in Amos is one of the most outstanding architectural element of the region by its size and its Romano-Byzantine style, standing on the upper part of the city, and being at a symbolic central location of the region. However, if the cityscapes are often more various, the rural landscape features more local particularities. The wooden farms and barns built according to many vernacular forms, the fieldstone churches and the wooden houses with locally so-called “Canadian Roof” (steep roof ending with long curved overhang covering a front balcony) are widespread.
Boomtowns and industrial cities[edit]
The cities of Southern Abitibi and the city of Témiscaming were established later and for industrial concerns, and follow a quite different organization. As they grew up often very quickly, the urban planning of these industrial cities is often eclectic. The initial boroughs of Val-d’Or and Rouyn-Noranda, for instance, are both built according to two different schemes; an industrial and planned borough built and planned by the mine, and a “boomtown” borough built suddenly with minimal planning for the thousands of people who arrived attracted by the effervescence of the gold rush. Bourlamaque mining village is a remarkable example of a borough planned by the mine still visible today in Val-d'Or, with its log houses for workers orderly settled between the mine and the commercial streets, this, at a glace from the foremen’s houses and the hospital.
Noranda was also built according to that scheme, however, the other great example of an industrial town is Témiscaming. The Témiscaming Garden City plan, designed by Scottish architect Thomas Adams (1871–1940) is a rare example in Quebec of a mono-industrial city where a company planned and endeavoured to grant comfort of its workers. There, the dwellings, and even the plan, which follows the shape of the hill, was not alone to grant this comfort, elements as Italian renaissance fountain, landscaping were also included into the cityscape.
Those cities, and many other industrial cities of that part of the region, contrast with the rest of the region, and even generally with the other country regions of Quebec. As the mining industry was mainly led by owners coming from the anglosphere in the early 20th century, industrial towns even show more similarities with Ontarian industrial cities than other cities in Quebec. Added to North American modernity concerns of the 1930s and 1940s, streets are broader and often have numbered names, blocks are orthogonally organized with lanes where boomtown buildings with their peculiar facades are aligned along the main streets while residential buildings take place nearby. Many mining cities disappeared or have decreased since, but their industrial core often keep being seenable today. Duparquet and Cadillac, for example, have kept their boomtown appearance, through their street organization, even if the industrial and population exodus gave them a look of oversized village.
Moreover, the multi-cultural settlement of those towns brought many singular architectural elements. The Russian Orthodox and Catholic Ukrainian churches in Val-d’Or and Rouyn add to the omnipresent architectural eclecticism. Nowadays, confronted with urban sprawl, those cities tend to develop in a very low density and functionalistic way, as other Quebec and North American cities. Some great buildings dominate the architectural landscape, as the Rouyn-Noranda campus of the Université du Québec, which could be seen by many aspects as the greatest element of contemporary architecture of the region.
