Clarence Hatton-Proulx is Assistant Professor of Geography at the Université de Montréal. His research looks at the history and geography of energy transitions, waste management, soil contamination, and deindustrialization. His first book, La ville énergivore : Une histoire des transitions énergétiques à Montréal au 20e siècle, has been published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2026. His research has also appeared in journals like Flux, Journal of Urban History, Enterprise and Society, Journal of Urban Affairs, and Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. He holds an M.A. in Science and Technology Studies (York University) and a PhD in urban studies and history (INRS & Sorbonne Université).
Project statement:
Heavy industry in changing urban contexts: conflicts around waste incinerators in Montréal and Paris
This project looks at the evolution of the relationship between industry and other urban functions in dense urban contexts. Whereas industrial cities were marked by an intense cohabitation and proximity between factories, workers, and homes, deindustrializing urban settings bring about tensions between different uses of the city and changing social fabrics around industrial sites. To study this dynamic, this project compares Montréal and Paris’ ways of treating municipal waste. Montréal burned its waste in incinerators until the 1990s, when social movements and economic constraint led to their closure. Despite political and financial pressure, Paris and its near suburbs still use three large incinerators to treat their waste. By investigating the reasons why these two cities’ waste treatment trajectories diverged, this project insists on the role of social and urban change in deindustrialization processes and on the importance of energy, politics, and architecture in understanding waste treatment trajectories.
