Suburban Industrial District Reconsidered

The suburban industrial district problem remains largely unexamined. ​“Industrial redevelopment” in the suburbs conjures a variety of ideas: of older factories and industrial parks being plowed under to make way for shopping malls and new subdivisions, or of brownfield sites being reused for ​“big-box” retail. But this is very much an oversimplified picture of what is happening. While some of the early suburban ​“industrial parks” that were part of the first ring expansion are being replaced, many others are adapting and re-inventing themselves for the next generation of manufacturers. At the same time, new ​“business parks” - more mixed-use in character with new ​“flex” industrial building types or expansive ​“logistics centers” - campuses for ​“just-in-time” distribution, are springing up in the far periphery of the metropolis.

While the New Urbanists and others have explored new ways to re-make other parts of the suburban landscape, in particular new town centers, and residential neighborhoods. They have even explored ways to re-make the shopping mall but the industrial landscape has been bypassed.

Why is this important? First, because there are great expanses of industrial land developed at some of the lowest intensities anywhere in the suburban landscape; the capacity of these places to absorb new growth is enormous. And many of the older industrial areas, now surrounded by a second wave of suburban expansion, are strategically positioned to link a disconnected landscape. Second, despite prejudices to the contrary, these places should remain part of the productive landscape playing host to a reinvigorated and re-positioned industrial sector.

So the real challenge of ​“industrial redevelopment” is not to figure out how to replace industry, but to find new ways of accommodating industry in a reconfigured edge city landscape. One of the accepted truths of town planning is that industry must be separated from everything else. Now we need to ask, ​“How can these places be redesigned so that they are integral to a re-connected suburban landscape?”