Edmonton, a resource city: urban development examined through unrecognized resource legacies

Abstract

Edmonton, Alberta, is currently associated with oil and gas industries, yet its history as a resource community is in many ways not only obscure but also influential, even key to the understanding of its urban development. Timber harvesting, brick making but most importantly local coal mining powered and structured Edmonton's growth. Several communities were key to this foundation, ultimately becoming hosts for many other city sustaining functions. River flats communities like Riverdale and Cloverdale were vulnerable to floods. Beverly, an official coal mining town had a prolonged history of struggle. McCauley was home to the Federal prison; resident prisoners mined the coal beneath Riverdale. Coal mining in Edmonton was replaced by informal and social housing, waste management, major transportation projects, and finally development of Edmonton's River Valley parks system. Edmonton provides a case study for expanding the resource communities narrative. Key communities in Edmonton's early years show how coal mining influenced landscape, economic shifts, and relationships within a growing city. A combined process of GIS analysis, local media analysis, and literature review provides a framework for understanding how Edmonton, a large northern city initially shared the experiences and difficulties of small resource communities in earlier years of growth and development. Large and diverse cities which seemingly transcended their extractive origin can be analyzed through the lens of resource legacies, which can reveal, as in Edmonton, that largely forgotten histories of vanished resources can mark cities and their planning in profound ways. We therefore speak of opaque resource cities.