The new Industrial Urbanism (original) (raw)
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Built Environment (Special Issue) 43\1, 2017
Since the Industrial Revolution, cities and industry have evolved together: from Manchester, England, to Rochester, New York, company towns and entire metropolitan regions have grown around factories and expanding industries. Despite this shared past, popular notions of manufacturing tend to highlight industry’s negative aspects: pollution, environmental degradation, and the exploitation of labor caused by expanding industry, on the one hand; and blight, abandonment, and “shrinkage” resulting from the more recent decline of manufacturing in cities in the developed world, on the other Industrial Urbanism moves the conversation beyond the negative, exploring the relationship between current urban planning practices and the places where goods are made todayIn a time of dramatic shifts in the manufacturing sector — from mass production to small-scale distributed factories; from polluting and consumptive production to a clean and sustainable process; from a demand of unskilled labor to a growing need for a more educated and specialized workforce — cities will see new investment and increased employment opportunities. Yet, to reap these benefits will require a shift in our thinking about manufacturing. In the quest to makes cities competitive and resilient, we should ask: What are the contemporary relationships between city and industry? What might future relationships between city and industry look like? What physical planning and design strategies should cities pursue to retain, attract, and increase manufacturing activity? These questions point to the limitations of the current planning and architectural paradigm in addressing manufacturing, and the need to conceptualize new planning strategies that would respond to and help cities adapt to current trends in manufacturing. Spatial adaptation to manufacturing is required at the regional, city and local scales, in both existing and new settings, and taking into account, not merely the physicality of space, but also its social and political characteristics. This is not a simple task. In a society widely perceived as “post-industrial,” it is essential to educate the public about manufacturing processes. A deeper awareness – a true consciousness-raising – is necessary if we are to dispel lingering misconceptions that portray industry as always unsafe and polluting and instead, present manufacturing as an appropriate and even desirable activity within the city. When industrial processes were most noxious, factories moved out of the city and into windowless, suburban boxes. The animosity was mutual: manufacturers were as content to shut the public out as the public was to banish them from their downtowns. This attitude must be altered if industry is to be welcomed back, to resume its role as a good (and productive) urban citizen. Manufacturers who take pride in their work will encourage the public to share in their fulfillment. Thus, redefining the role of industry in our urban areas, making it an integral part of our cities, is a spatial, social and economic challenge. More than two centuries after the start of the Industrial Revolution, policy makers, planners and designers have an opportunity to reconsider the ways industry creates places, sustains jobs, and promotes environmental sustainability. This is the future of manufacturing. This is the future of our cities.
Industrial Urbanism: Places of Production
Since the Industrial Revolution, cities and industry have evolved together: from Manchester to Rochester, company towns and entire metropolitan regions have grown around factories and expanding industries. However despite this shared past, popular notions of manufacturing tend to highlight the negative aspects: pollution, environmental degradation, and the exploitation of labor caused by growing industry, on the one hand; and – almost paradoxically on the other – the blight, abandonment, and “shrinkage” resulting from the more recent decline of manufacturing from cities in the developed world. Industrial Urbanism: Places of Production moves the conversation beyond these overly-negative characterizations, exploring the relationship between current urban planning practices and the places that are being designed and dedicated to the production of goods today. In a time of dramatic shifts in the manufacturing sector – from large industrial-scale production and design to small-scale distributed systems; from polluting and consumptive production to a clean and sustainable process; from a demand of unskilled labor to a growing need for a more educated and specialized workforce – cities will see new investment and increased employment opportunities. Yet, to reap these benefits will require a shift in our thinking about manufacturing. The exhibition addresses three integrated themes: Production, People, and Places. These themes are presented, both separately and in relation to one another, as components that reposition the city as a key actor for industry and production and restore industry to its historic role as a crucial element in the weave of the urban fabric.
Industrialization - (2nd edition)
International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2020
This article (1) defines industrialization and indicates ways in which it can be measured, (2) highlights the importance of the timing of industrialization and the inherent limits to the proper scientific explanation of this phenomenon, (3) disentangles the often confused conceptual relation between industrialization and capitalism, (4) explicates the causal links between industrialization and modernization, (5) undertakes a brief assessment of the relative costs and benefits of industrialization, and (6) discloses the defining contours of scholarship on industrialization in Anglo-American human geography and illustrates it with a recent attempt to integrate the field with the help of a master metaphor called 'recursive cartographies'. Its portrayal of economic reality as interplay of legacies, rhythms, and events conveys the usefulness of spatial thinking in industrialization research. How to cite: Simandan, D., 2020. Industrialization. In: Kobayashi, A. (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2nd edition. vol. 7, Elsevier, pp. 255–260. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102295-5.10086-1
International Encyclopedia of Human Geography
Simandan D (2009) Industrialization, In R Kitchin & N Thrift, (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography , Oxford: Elsevier, volume 5, pp. 419-425. ABSTRACT: This article (1) defines industrialisation and indicates ways in which it can be measured, (2) highlights the importance of the timing of industrialisation and the inherent limits to the proper scientific explanation of this phenomenon, (3) disentangles the often confused conceptual relation between industrialisation and capitalism, (4) explicates the causal links between industrialisation and modernisation, (5) undertakes a brief assessment of the relative costs and benefits of industrialisation, and (6) discloses the defining contours of scholarship on industrialisation in Anglo-American human geography and illustrates it with a recent attempt to integrate the field with the help of a master metaphor called ‘recursive cartographies’. Its portrayal of economic reality as interplay of legacies, rhythms, and events conveys the usefulness of spatial thinking in industrialisation research.
Rethinking the City in the Industrial Aftermath
Narodna umjetnost: Croatian Journal of Ethnology and Folklore Research, 2023
Drawing on ethnographic studies of two postindustrial cities in Croatia, Sisak and Bakar, the authors analyse how the communities narrate their industrial pasts, address industry-related environmental fallouts and define the potentials of postindustrial urban life. They focus on diverse narrations and practices through which the formerly industrial communities make sense of industrialisation and deindustrialisation. Local understandings of (post)industrial urban life are grasped through the concept of socioindustrial memory. The concept highlights the fact that communities can have different ideas about similar socioeconomic processes depending on the ways in which they conceptualise the present and futures of their postindustrial cities, but it also underlines that the process of industrialisation was orchestrated politically as an act of socialist modernisation. The article outlines shared features and investigates disparities of postindustrial city-making and, in doing so, underlines the significance of context-based interpretations of such transformations. In both cities, the shutting down of factories left the inhabitants without major providers of livelihood. In Sisak, deindustrialisation meant long-term unemployment, which triggered postindustrial nostalgia. For citizens of Bakar, socialist industrialisation is an environmental threat and a turn away from tourism-development prospects. The authors conclude that images of the industrial past change their meanings in relation to the present needs and fears of postindustrial communities, as well as their visions of alternative, hopefully brighter futures.