Speaker
Description
In this research we explore how urban planners negotiate and respond to changing industry and land use governance contexts. We seek to better understand if and how planning systems adapt in response to emerging and ongoing urban challenges. Our focus is on urban industrial land use planning and the role of planners in shaping productive city futures oriented toward reintegrating manufacturing into the city (European Commission 2020).
Pandemic-era supply chain disruptions, climate threats, and geopolitical insecurity have engendered massive federal investments in reshoring manufacturing and growing local production across the globe through programs such as the European Commission’s Green Deal Industrial Plan and the Australian Government’s A Future Made in Australia (Middleton 2024). Yet in cities with competitive land markets, the rezoning and redevelopment of industrial areas to other uses has dramatically reduced industrial land supply and created hyper-competitive industrial property markets that threaten these investments (Ferm, 2023; Grodach, 2022). There is growing interest in promoting advanced, digitized manufacturing integrated in cities, yet this often overshadows the ongoing need for basic industrial services that enable cities to function. Moreover, industrial firms increasingly defy traditional categories, blurring the line between production and service functions. All of these factors complicate traditional industrial land use separation and containment strategies.
In this context, we focus on how planners in Australia’s three largest cities- Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney- implement policy narratives and ideas around industrial land and activity. We examine the ways in which planning professionals conceptualize and manage changing industry, how they imagine and plan for the needs of current and future industrial land, and explore practitioner narratives on industrial land protection, innovation, and transition. We then contrast this to industrial firm experiences with the planning system. We focus in particular on smaller, low impact firms that may be integrated into urban areas under productive city mandates to understand how they navigate contemporary industrial governance settings, planning imaginaries and regulatory contexts. The analysis reveals a variety of often competing ideas within and between local and regional governments and between planners and firms around the nature of industrial land. Findings highlight the tensions and challenges of implementing productive city mandates due to governance frameworks and regulatory processes, enterprise needs, and property market realities.
References
European Commission (2020) The new Leipzig charter: The transformative power of cities for the common good. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/brochure/new_leipzig_charter/new_leipzig_charter_en.pdf
Ferm, Jessica (2023) Hyper-competitive industrial markets: Implications for urban planning and the manufacturing renaissance. Urban Planning 8(4): 263–274.
Grodach, Carl (2022) The institutional dynamics of land use planning: Urban industrial lands in San Francisco. Journal of the American Planning Association 88(4): 537–549.
Middleton, Karen (2024) Albanese reveals plan for interventionist green industry policy similar to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act., 11 April. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/11/albanese-says-australia-needs-sharper-elbows-as-he-signals-domestic-innovation-push
| Keywords | governance; industrial land; land use regulation; manufacturing; planners; zoning |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
