NO MAN'S LAND: deconstructing the company camp in Canada's Oil Sands

camp;work camp;oil sands;tar sands;Alberta;company town;Architecture

Strong, James

University of Waterloo

关键词: camp;    work camp;    oil sands;    tar sands;    Alberta;    company town;    Architecture;   

Others  :  https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstream/10012/9325/3/STRONG_JAMES.pdf

瑞士|英语

来源: UWSPACE Waterloo Institutional Repository

【 摘 要 】

For nearly fifty years, commercial development in the Canadian Oil Sands has been the generator of a population explosion in northern Alberta.Oil sector workers seeking stable employment and high wages have been drawn to the region for decades; often with the intention of re-settling permanently (or semi-permanently) in local communities near industrial activities.These population increases have long been the driver of urban (and sub-urban) development in Fort McMurray; which has grown to become a fully functioning industrial town of nearly 100 thousand permanent residents.While many consider Fort McMurray a paragon of the contemporary ;;single industry’ (or company) town, an exclusive academic focus on ;;city-building’ has failed to acknowledge the increasing relevance of the company work camp in accommodating perpetual population increases.Indeed, statistical and demographic data – gathered by the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo – has revealed a trend prioritizing the deployment of company camps in lieu of permanent improvements to the existing urban construct.Overwhelmingly, the camp has been characterized as the natural consequence of industrial expansion: as resource extraction operations advance farther into the Canadian hinterland, the centripetal urban model (i.e. Fort McMurray) is rendered increasingly obsolete.The expanding industrial footprint has necessitated an alternate (extra)urban project.This assumption - that the camp is inevitable - has severely limited the ongoing public discourse surrounding contemporary working accommodations, and has contributed to a perception of the camp as ;;benign’ or ;;passive’ when – in fact – the opposite is true.This thesis aims to assess the current scope and scale of camp deployment through a careful accounting of individual accommodations sites while simultaneously exploring the organizational prerogatives of camp deployment.The camp – as extra-urban paradigm – is linked to an explicit economic agenda which has successfully institutionalized a ;;nomadic,’ ;;transient,’ or otherwise ;;precarious’ working regime on what is arguably Canada’s most significant industrial project.