The Design of Urban Manufacturing

American cities are rediscovering the economic and social value of urban manufacturing. However, urban manufacturing is often invisible and poorly understood in terms of urban design, architecture, and policy. The Design of Urban Manufacturing brings a multidisciplinary approach to a new complex reality that urban manufacturing now sits squarely at the intersection of research, education, and neighborhood revitalization. Using cases studies from across North America and beyond, this book presents innovative approaches not only to the design of districts and buildings, but to the design of policy as well: the special roles that governments, local development corporations, and not-for-profit organizations all have to play in supporting manufacturing.

This book presents current models for working neighborhoods where factories enable fine-grained, mixed-use communities and face-to-face contact while creatively solving the very real problems of goods movement and functional buildings. Design guidelines and policy recommendations are calibrated to different types of production districts.

The Design of Urban Manufacturing is the essential resource for policy makers, designers, and students in urban design, planning, and urban and economic development.

Robert N. Lane is Principal of Plan & Process LLC and is Senior Fellow for Urban Design at Regional Plan Association, where he directs the Regional Design Program, devoted to reforming the metropolitan landscape through research and place-based planning and design interventions. Industrial district design and redevelopment has been a particular area of focus for research, publications, exhibitions, and lecturing. Robert N. Lane was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design during the 2008-2009 academic year; he was also a 2013 Fellow at the Design Trust for Public Space for the Making Midtown initiative.

Nina Rappaport is an architectural historian, curator, and educator. She focuses on industrial urbanism, infrastructure, and the role of the factory worker. She is author of Vertical Urban Factory (2015) which includes an exhibition and a think tank of the same name. She is co-editor of the Ezra Stoller: Photographer (2012) and author of Support and Resist: Structural Engineers and Design Innovation (2007). She is Publications Director at the Yale School of Architecture and was a Fellow of the Design Trust for Public Space in 2006. She is a Lecturer at the Michael Graves College of Public Architecture at Kean University, and has taught in other New York City area schools. She writes for numerous journals and lectures internationally.