Globalization, collective action and local initiative in Montreal's reconversion

Abstract

This text presents an analysis of the role played  local initiatives in the process of local development, within the frame of the metropolitan economic reconversion driven by globalization. Reconversion makes metropolis specialize in high economic sectors, both technically and scientifically developed. This fact puts in danger the viability of the more traditional sectors and overall, fragilizes the endowment of intrametropolitan spaces in wich those sectores had been specializated, as ways of life and labour. From the case of Montreal, it will be seen that these spaces shelter alternatives experiences whose objective is that of involving those communities wich have become excluded of the reconversion experienced by high technological sectors, wich is driven by market forces. This patterns auspices a reconversion wich becomes more involving form a social point of view and in wich technological innovation combines itself with social innovation. But, it also shows that this social association is the result of a process in wich local initiatives structure the territory and set the limits of identity spaces through collective actions, building in this way the foundations of a develpment pattern in wich the economic issue inserts itself in the social one, and in wich territorial environment is progressively constructed.