March 2022
Authors: Tali Hatuka and Eran Ben-Joseph
Routledge
Technological innovation is changing rapidly, and with it our life. Technological innovation is also expected to further change our labor markets, institutions, and production of goods. There are two acute core issues here. First, how to invest in workers and their skills, bringing to bear the full weight of modern teaching methods and training technology, as well as new institutions, to help them drive the jobs of the future (Autor et al., 2020). Second, how these specialized changes will be supported by the spatial and physical development of our cities and regions. Today’s policy discourse focuses on the importance of manufacturing for economies as well as for the resilience of society. Scholars argue that manufacturing remains vital to local, regional, and national economic growth and comprises “‘the ‘flywheel of growth’ because the rate of growth of manufacturing output tends to drive the rate of productivity growth in manufacturing and in services” (Pike, 2009: 59). This approach is gaining recognition, particularly with the development of technology, which requires specialized, skilled labor (Pisano and Shih, 2012; Plant, 2014). But while the economic arguments for urban manufacturing and the policies that support it are maturing, the social and spatial strategies for supporting manufacturing in cities are still embryonic. Indeed, economic strategies are vital to the development of manufacturing; yet if these are not correlated with social and spatial policies, their chances of maturing are low.
That is the departure point of this book, which is based on two linked assumptions: (1) the importance of advanced manufacturing for cities’ growth; (2) the need for cultivating varied socio-spatial strategies that can support manufacturing and would benefit diverse social groups in the city. This link between manufacturing, society, and space might help tackle the increasing global competition for resources, investments, and projects; unemployment as a side effect of globalization and as an effect of the transfer of production to developing countries; and the cost of energy for the transportation of goods. Although economic development cannot be considered separately from social or spatial development, most studies on manufacturing focus on economic strategies and/or environmental strategies. This book flips the coin, proposing to focus on social and spatial issues related to manufacturing in cities as a mean to further examine and develop future economic strategies. In prioritizing people and space, this book responds to the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” by developing a socio-spatial framework that relates to advanced manufacturing, rather than seeing such manufacturing as a goal in itself.
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