Approche critique des archétypes de pôles logistiques intermodaux en Amérique du Nord et de la rhétorique de leur promotion dans la région métropolitaine de Montréal

This research focuses on the tools and urban forms associated with freight transport, and more specifically on the development of intermodal logistics clusters in the specific context of Montréal. The ongoing reconfiguration of the key elements of intermodal dynamics affects the strategic components of Montréal’s logistics heritage: the port, the railways, but also the road network that ensures the local coherence of the transportation system and is heavily handicapped by the problems of congestion. The Quebec Government’s desire to promote intermodal transport on the basis of the supposed environmental and economic benefits of intermodal transport and logistics clusters reveals them as crucial sociopolitical issues that call for an understanding of the forces at work in the spread and instrumentalisation of this development model (Chapter 1). However, the deterministic epistemological assumptions on which the promotion of such projects is based are marked by an evolutionary illusion, relegating to the background the will of different players acting on their formation, transformation and public debate. This also affects the orientation of the scientific debate and is reflected in geographical models that resist the historical reality of a case like Montréal. We therefore propose a dialectical approach to the interaction dynamics of the technological innovation/capitalist regulation mode, which highlights the role of particular firms that drive the cycles of deployment of technical tools and urbanization (Chapter 2). The development of the archetypes of intermodal logistics clusters in America is part of the genesis of the intermodal system, where the power relations that articulate the IV concrete development of the intermodal sociotechnical system appear dominated by the large-­‐scale distribution companies. These constitute a “growth pole” imposing strategies that promote new urban forms, the archetypes of logistics poles, specifically favourable to this form of enterprise (Chapter 3). The analysis of projects to set up the integrated centres and logistics centres in the Montréal region reveals a selection by the dominant players of the intermodal potentials around the solutions that favour their logistical and management objectives. These objectives of the dominant players are assimilated by the local political actors as propaganda tools for the promotion of development projects likely to circumvent the limits imposed in the Montréal area, in particular by the Act respecting the preservation of agricultural land, and to neutralize the regional and national debate on intermodal logistics development (Chapter 4). The conclusion of this thesis shows that the promotion of integrated logistics clusters in the Montréal region, which are the victims of its speculative dynamics, did not lead to effective planning of this development. This observation will enable us to reflect on the public governance of networks and urban planning, its research and its teaching, from a more autonomous perspective of strict technical and economic considerations.

Keyphrases: Transport Marchandise, Montréal, Urbanization, Freight Transportation, Intermodal System, Capitalist Regulation, Logistics Clusters, Land Dynamics, Montreal