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My adopted hometown of Pittsburgh has a famous industrial base. Many of the formerly working-class communities, both inside the city (Lawrenceville, South Side, Hazelwood, etc), and outside the city (Braddock, Duquense, McKees Rocks, etc), were essentially set up as walkable neighborhoods for mill workers. Closest to the river there was a band of industrial property, followed by worker housing, and then higher on the slope the housing generally improved in quality, as managers tended to live there to lessen the pollution. Through the middle was a commercial thoroughfare for all regular shopping needs, and a streetcar line connected the neighborhood with downtown Pittsburgh.
Obviously these neighborhoods were highly walkable - in many ways exactly what we claim we want in modern cities. They were, however, famously filthy - choked with smog. When we tore out our attic to rehab, we found a six-inch layer of black fines inside the ceiling - remnants of a century of coal dust, soot from the steel mills, and who knows what else. Indeed, the first major suburban push in America - Streetcar suburbs - was largely not to escape bad schools, poor people, or to get a front lawn, it was to live in an area not quite as polluted as the old haunts of the wealthy.
Pittsburgh also famously Deindustrialized with the collapse of the steel industry. While locally seen as a tragedy, and causing a huge outflux of working-age people, the upside was that the air cleared dramatically, and people realized Pittsburgh had a stunningly beautiful natural scenery.
Today, manufacturing is a ghost of what it was in the past. Figures from 2000 suggested the City had only around 33,000 jobs in manufacturing and related industries, like warehousing and utilities, as of 2000. 2010 estimates from the City have yet to be released, but given nationwide manufacturing employment declined by a third during that decade, there could easily be 20,000 or less.
However, there are still major neighborhoods which have huge areas zoned industrial. Virtually all of the Strip District and Chateau are a mixture of remaining factories, warehouses, and "dirty" commercial like truck repair and scrapyards. The same is still true for a lot of the coastal portions of South Side and Lawrenceville.
However, these areas are highly desirable for new development. They are all reasonably close to downtown, big flat plots of land, and right on the waterfront. The residential portions of South Side and Lawrenceville have both gentrified. South Side is further along, since it started a decade earlier, and there some of the existing industry is already being displaced (as opposed to when vacant factories are merely converted into lofts).
The logical conclusion of all this is that virtually all industry and "dirty commercial" will be pushed out of the city core and into the outlying regions. When I've mentioned this to locals, they generally aren't concerned, saying things along the lines of "there's plenty of empty space in the Mon Valley (an area of distressed, independent mill towns) for industry, let it all relocate there." Or "only a few dozen people work in each of those warehouses now, so it's no big loss."
That said, I find this aspect of the modern city disturbing. It seems the logical conclusion is the modern city, unlike the 19th century sort, will only be convenient to white-collar workers, who can easily walk, or take a train, to their own place of work in a central business district or university area. The remaining blue collar will have to drive, and presumably eventually relocate to the suburbs entirely for better convenience to their place of work.
It's also something I mourn because, as someone in the labor movement, I know that one of the side effects (actually, intentional in many cases) of the suburbanization of blue-collar work has been the decline of labor unions. Back in the old days, factories were right in the neighborhood, often with a bar right across the street. The way unions found contacts to see if there were issues in the plant was to hang out in the local bar and talk to people. With the retreat of blue-collar business into industrial parks, which are private property, the best you can do is leaflet people driving in, and even then you're likely to get kicked out.
Anyway, this has gone on longer than I meant it to. Just wondered if you guys had some feedback.
I agree, industry has a place in modern cities. In the past century, environmental regulation means that many of those industries are a lot cleaner and nicer neighbors than they once were, making proximity to residential neighborhoods a lot less problematic, but the stigma is still there. I live near a light industrial district, and find them to be good neighbors, although some folks consider them a problem simply for being industrial uses--even though they represent jobs and commercial activity. Some former industrial sites have been replaced with urban infill, but many still serve their traditional functions. I see no reason why they should stop--cities aren't here to be adorable boutiques for the rich, but economic engines and trade centers for everyone.
I've always liked Georgetown, Seattle, a community virtually surrounded by industry (BNSF tracks, former Rainier Brewery, lots of smaller industries, and Boeing field. It's a place as artsy or creative as any in Seattle but embraces its industrial neighbors.
It's pretty neat to sip coffee while a being-tested Dreamliner roars above. People there seemed to be doing something, creating art, products, or whatever ... and not merely consuming them. It's a good feeling.
I think what the OP meant by industrial zoning is requiring the only type of building to be industrial
Not at all. I meant in modern walkable mixed-use cities do we really just mean mixed housing, storefront commercial, and offices? Or do blue-collar type employers have a role as well?
Yes, I absolutely think that industrial uses have a place in modern cities. Granted, there should be some limits -- certain types of high-hazard uses are better off farther away from high-density locations, for safety reasons.
There was recently controversy in a formerly industrial neighborhood in downtown Minneapolis when an ice cream factory wanted to locate there and some of the neighbors (who were presumably attracted to the area for its converted industrial lofts -- guess they wanted the ambiance minus the actual industry) and the developer of a proposed new housing development on the block were upset by the idea of associated industrial traffic (delivery trucks, etc.). I'm not sure where things stand now, but the idea that a small, local ice cream factory is not welcomed into a traditionally industrial neighborhood because neighbors might complain about the noise of trucks is preposterous.
My childhood neighborhood has had the majority of its industrial uses gentrified out of it, and while it's been very good in some ways (a former railroad track is now a bike highway, there's been lots of new housing built along the banks of the industrial trench, etc.), I think the neighborhood also lost something when the last big lumberyards and the like closed up shop and moved elsewhere. (although there IS still a successful small ice cream factory on an otherwise all-residential block, and as far as I know the neighbors haven't ever complained about traffic! I think a lot of people didn't even know they made ice cream there until they opened a small cafe/parlor facing the street.)
Thirty years ago this type of zoning was needed- Not anymore with manufacturing being less and less...Most of our industrially zoned areas in Toronto are now mostly converted factories and warehouses that have been turned to lofts and condos.
Thirty years ago this type of zoning was needed- Not anymore with manufacturing being less and less...Most of our industrially zoned areas in Toronto are now mostly converted factories and warehouses that have been turned to lofts and condos.
It will be interesting to see how things change in the next 50 years as China's and India's wages continue to increase. Manufacturing will shift elsewhere, of course, but, also, some of it will shift back in to the US (and Canada, for that matter).
Wouldn't pushing industry out to the suburbs and exurbs make contribute to even more sprawl and population loss in the cities?
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