Making Room for Manufacturing: Understanding Industrial Land Conversion in Cities

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Planners face tension when dealing with the stock of urban industrial land: Should they enact industrial land preservation policies to protect viable manufacturers that provide good jobs even if it exacerbates the problem of affordable housing and causes cities to forgo growth in other sectors? Planners need better information on the underlying forces that lead to conversion of industrial land and an assessment of the effectiveness of preservation policies. We develop here an index of vulnerability of industrial land that is based on location factors, neighborhood dynamics, detailed industrial trends, environmental hazards, and local regulations. We show how these factors can explain the probability of the conversion of industrial land to other uses in Cook County (IL) and Mecklenburg County (NC) and describe how various industrial preservation polices are effective in limiting conversion.

Takeaway for practice: Cities can use this index to strategically plan for industries to target and sites to preserve as industrial uses. Traditional planning and regulatory tools such as industrial zone designations do reduce conversion risk, while factors such as transit accessibility increase the probability of conversion. We argue that local governments should be strategic about which manufacturing industries can be preserved at what locations using these tools. We also develop and demonstrate an open source, interactive, web-based tool that demonstrates some of the key concepts that can be replicated in other places.

Keywords:

• industrial land preservation
• manufacturing
• land use policy
• economic development

Notes

1 Total U.S. manufacturing employment grew by 729,668 from 11.3 million in January 2010 to 12.1 million in June 2013 based on data from the Quarterly Census of -Employment and Wages (QCEW; U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). Manufacturing exports grew by $429 billion from $918 billion in 2009 to $1.35 trillion in 2012, according to data from the International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce (n.d.).

2 Average annual earnings per worker in manufacturing was 22.9% higher than the overall average earnings across all private sector -industries ($60,496 versus $49,200) in 2012. Source: QCEW (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012).

3 Various industrial land reports can be found at http://communityinnovation.berkeley.edu/industrial-land-report.html