Tuesday 5 January 2016

A good city has industry: A talk by Mark Brearley




We should embrace urban industry, welcome the economic diversity of cities, push back against de-mixing and suburbanisation. 

In this punchy talk Brearley observes the diversity of London’s industrial life. He celebrates its responsiveness and buoyancy, and points out how that city's fast growth and insatiable demand for housing are hollowing out some of what makes it most interesting, vibrant and resilient. Listen well, London is eating itself, an unfortunate side effect of success. Urban industry, including manufacturing, is especially fragile, under threat from a fast moving land market and the floppiness of planning. 

The case is made for ensuring a filigree of industrial accommodation right across London, for a city able to embrace its aggregates, its builders merchants, its waste re-use and its just-in-time production, its hirers, it’s showmen, it’s stock holders and deliverers. 

A good London would be proud of it’s many hundred car menders, of Ford and Caterham, Brompton and Mylands, Tate & Lyle and Dunhill, the Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda depots, the Yodel, UPS and Parcel Force sheds, the scrap metal, glass and paper, the jewellery and leather goods crafters, the dress makers, cleaners, the scaffolders, the metal fabricators. 

Brearley argues that the city we want would let us see all these things, walk past them, on the way to elsewhere, appreciated and respected. In the city we want we would know about the diversity of industry, perhaps choose to enter that world because it is normal and everyday, choose to help make it stronger and therefore our city the richer.

This talk was recorded at the two day ISOCARP Congress session in Antwerp, October 2015, the first of several public airings of this engaging 35 minute run-through.

http://www.isocarp2015.org/themes/ant...
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/20...
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesi...
http://justspace.org.uk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW4GA...

Mark Brearley is a professor at The Cass, Aldgate, London. He heads the Cass Cities initiative, is the proprietor of a manufacturing business in Peckham, and is busy telling the world about over 2000 manufacturers in London (see Instagram: @madeinlondon.uk). 

Contact Mark Brearley at mark@mboffice.org.uk

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/faculties/...
http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/faculties/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkCHz...
http://websta.me/n/madeinlondon.uk
http://www.kaymet.co.uk
http://www.real-craft.co.uk/section76...

No comments:

Post a Comment