Description

The success of a city has always been determined to a large extent by its success as a workplace, i.e. its ability to provide jobs. Port cities flourished with new maritime trade routes, textile cities with new production methods, and the occurrence of iron-rich ore and coal was the basis for cities with heavy industry. The rail transport network that has developed since the middle of the nineteenth century gave an industrial impetus to cities that were strongly marked by the presence of skilled trades and local commerce. That impetus was carried by active entrepreneurial personalities, supported by a continually growing population that was eager to learn and work, and it was further accelerated by the technical and social upheavals in the aftermaths of the wars.

In the nineteenth century, while the tradesmen and manufacturing operations that focused primarily on providing local services were still establishing themselves in the town centres, larger industrial operations were already seeking out sites on the outskirts of the towns and cities. It was here that they found sufficient space for operating economically and for future expansion. In the course of time, new housing developments for the continually growing numbers of workers were put up right next to the factories. The factories were situated as far as possible on the northern or eastern sides of the towns, so that the wind would blow the smoke, fumes and noise away from the urban areas.

Overall planning for urban development was an attempt to control the stormy growth of the cities in the second half of the nineteenth century. An important aspect of this was adequate provision for vehicular and pedestrian traffic corresponding to the increasing division of labour in society and an ever more mobile population. In Munich in 1904, for example, an overall urban development plan, the Staffelbauordnung, was passed. It was drawn up on the basis of an urban planning competition held in 1892, and it established the height and density of development, that both of these were to decrease from the center to the outskirts, and industry was assigned its own areas. There was no further organizational impetus in it, and there was neither a stricter separation of functions – for example, between manufacturing, commerce and the home – nor any awareness of any necessity to do so.

The Athens Charter of 1933 formulated the requirements for healthy cities, setting them out in three sections – living, recreation and work. It called for short commutes, acceptable densities and green belts to separate industrial areas from residential areas so as to shield them from emissions, and in addition, easily reachable, central administrative authorities and tradesmen’s workshops inside residential areas. Even now, these are still sensible requirements, modified of course by the technological advances in the reduction of industrial emissions.

The separation of living, working and recreation had a determinative influence on urban planning in the stormy years of urban growth after the Second World War. In Germany bodies of rules and regulations like DIN 18005 (Noise Abatement in Town Planning) have provided for distancing residential areas from places of work, and with the increase in motorization, the continually expanding distances were no longer any real obstacle to accessibility. But industry’s demand for space also continued to grow. This meant that industrial firms were increasingly pushed out of the cities. Rising land prices and difficult access conditions also rendered the adaptation of the old sites to modern work processes and logistic systems more difficult in many cases. In the relocation of large firms, municipal authorities saw opportunities for easing the burden of heavy goods vehicle traffic and for urban modernization by attracting service providers and constructing new housing.

In the last two decades, a fundamental shift in thinking has taken place in cities. Industrial firms, with their variety of workplaces and their international networks are once more highly valued and great efforts are being made to retain them and integrate them. This is facilitated by the miniaturization of many work processes and the improvements in emission protection.

In order to survive and flourish, cities need to offer a varied supply of jobs for blue collar and white collar workers. Research and development are dependent on the proximity of theory and practice, on large and small companies, on research institutions, and on trade and industry. Only routine processes can be communicated virtually and controlled over great distances; innovation processes are dependent on direct communication, creative collaboration, and synergetic effects. Successful enterprises are usually located in clusters of related companies. Silicon Valley is the most well-known example of this – but it also holds true for the biotech industry, the vehicle construction industry, the film industry, and the financial services sector.

Cities therefore have to create short- and long-term strategies and sustainable perspectives for the spatial development of the industrial firms that are located there, so that structural transformations, tertiarization and global competition do not lead to industrial firms relocating elsewhere, and the accompanying loss of jobs in commerce and industry. It is only with an up-to-date, integrated and strategic urban development planning in which the goals for economic, social and spatial urban development are formulated, that the appropriate conditions for the development of industry, trade, and commerce can be created.

A trade and industry area development program, such as the one the city of Munich has worked out, incorporates future demand and creates for the cities and the companies located there a reliable basis.

In this connection, it is a matter of

1. conserving existing commercial and industrial real estate in sufficient quantity and protecting it from increasingly fragile uses;

2. ensuring a supply of new acreage corresponding to current access and organizational requirements for new industrial and commercial clusters, for example, for medical technology or biotechnology;

3. restructuring traditional industrial and commercial spaces into modern workplaces in office-like building structures, for communications technology for example, whose establishment on well-connected sites has to be supported despite the fact that unmodernized, emission-producing industrial operations next to them will have to be abandoned;

4. creating sufficiently large areas for utilities and waste management services as the basis for a healthy economy.

Today, modern industrial enterprises have multi-storey buildings for research and development, large production facilities and logistics operations facilities of considerable size for just-in-time production. With their large-scale operations and the volume of traffic they generate 24 hours a day, they can integrate into the urban fabric only at unsusceptible locations. Nonetheless, it is absolutely necessary that recreational facilities and open spaces, kindergartens, gastronomy and retailing are directly accessible from them, for modern work organization, time management and today’s familial structure require a workplace-oriented organization of day-to-day life. The quality of urban planning is evinced therefore in the linking up of the different norms of work and dwelling in the city. In this way, a modern industrial and commercial area development program on the basis of strategic urban development planning is the foundation for social peace, and the welfare of urban society.

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Originally published in: Jürgen Adam, Katharina Hausmann, Frank Jüttner, Industrial Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.