Conclusion

This chapter reviews Chicago's industrial base that had been eviscerated, and its place-dependent industrial and civic leaders who, by the 1960s, were fighting a losing battle to maintain the city's industrial prominence. It mentions the relentless structural forces arrayed against Chicago that was true of other industrial centers across the Manufacturing Belt. It also talks about the combination of attractive locational assets and corporate strategies that sought increased market share and profits at the expense of places that led to continued and uneven disinvestment in Chicago's industrial base. The chapter analyses the long-term consequence that saw fewer factories and industrial jobs found in Chicago at the beginning of each new industrial cycle. It reviews how the slow process of decline that began in the 1920s became a tsunami of industrial loss from the second half of the 1940s.

Building the Suburban Factory and Industrial Decline in Postwar Chicago

This chapter examines the built form of deindustrialization through an examination of the metropolitan geography of factory construction after 1945. It shows the little capital investment that flowed to Chicago, while the suburbs became the prime location for the construction of new industrial facilities. It also discusses how employment loss in the central city of Chicago was rooted in site selection decisions made by the managers of industrial and financial firms about more profitable locations for fixed-capital investment. The chapter focuses on factory construction that provides a different perspective on the impact that industrial change had on the built environment. It looks at studies of the relationship between local economic change, politics, and place dependency that have demonstrated the tenuous hold that places have on productive forces and the unequal relationship that exists between place and capital.

Industrial Parks as Industrial Renewal

This chapter looks at the other main industrial redevelopment strategy that emerged in the 1960s. It mentions the building of industrial parks in the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Ashland Industrial Center in the deindustrialized Stockyards, that became a failure despite the allocation of significant funds by public–private partnerships. It emphasizes how the institutional fix of the industrial park could not solve the Chicago's manufacturing decline. The chapter refers to industrial areas that consist of many lots managed on a long-term basis by industrial and nonindustrial promoters. It outlines two principles that shaped the development of the industrial park in postwar Chicago: First was modern planning ideas that emerged after 1890 and second was the search for ordered space paralleled by the search for property profits.

Reinventing Industrial Property

This chapter demonstrates the Mayor's Committee for Economic and Cultural Development (CECD) that substituted the Chicago Land Clearance Commission's (CLCC) strategy of using government funds to replace razed blighted space with new industrial districts. It examines the methods used by the CECD to modernize the practices that induced industrial firms to invest in city property. It also points out how the CECD was instrumental in shaping how city leaders viewed industrial property through the 1960s and early 1970s. The chapter recounts CECD's work to resituate industrial property as a space for science-led industrial development and the rejuvenation of existing factory areas between 1961 and 1976. It cites how the CECD contributed to the government-led economic development policies that became increasingly common in the United States since the 1970s by forcing the city and industrial institutions to rethink how to promote industrial growth.

Introduction

This chapter examines Chicago's industrial decline and the response of the city's place-dependent bourgeoisie to its fading fortunes. It charts the history of industrial change between 1920 and 1975 and looks at the creation of industrial redevelopment programs in the city of Chicago in the postwar years as city leaders responded to these industrial changes. It also argues that the city of Chicago experienced industrial decline from the 1920s and city leaders implemented several industrial renewal initiatives in the postwar period in an attempt to reverse industrial decline. The chapter explains how the industrial renewal failed, emphasizing on the place-dependent coalitions of developers, financiers, politicians, small business owners, and industrial managers that worked to counter deindustrialization were fighting a losing battle. It mentions alliances that consisted of people from real estate, health, education, finance, and government that pushed a new vision for Chicago.

Industrial Renewal and Land Clearance

This chapter presents a chronological narrative of institutional fixes implemented to counter industrial decline in Chicago. It considers different programs and institutions that supported Chicago's industrial renewal program and examines the Chicago Land Clearance Commission (CLCC) as the city's major industrial redeveloper in the 1950s that was authorized to designate blighted areas and vacant land as redevelopment projects. It also elaborates the CLCC's key role in the creation of new industrial property as a solution to Chicago's industrial decline. The chapter details how the CLCC used state and federal legislative tools that enabled cities to appropriate federal funds for private ends, to allow the exercise of eminent domain over blighted property, and to realign ownership rights in favor of property developers. It describes blight, falling property values, and declining retail sales as problems that would continue to undermine Chicago's prominence and cut into company profits.

Industrial Decline and the Rise of the Suburbs

This chapter focuses on the uneven industrial decline in metropolitan Chicago. It describes the extensive decanting of manufacturing employment from the central city from the 1920s and the wholesale exodus of industrial jobs from Chicago after 1945. It also discusses the spatial reconfiguration of manufacturing investment at both the metropolitan and regional levels in Chicago as firms began to rethink their geographies of production and to search for alternate investment sites. The chapter analyses the interwar reconfiguration that was predicated on the relative decline of Chicago and the rise of the suburbs as the preeminent location for industrial production and employment. It traces the deindustrialization that started in the 1970s as an outcome of a process that dates back to the breakdown of an old system of industrial organization in the interwar period and the poorly directed affairs of wartime mobilization.

Industrial Property and Blight in the 1950s

This chapter analyzes the attempts by Chicago's public–private partnerships to fight industrial decline in the 1950s by linking blight, property, and redevelopment. It recounts the South Side Planning Board's failed attempt to redevelop an area of the South Side as an industrial district. It also looks at the fight between residents and the Bodine Electric Company over the property rights embedded in the zoning ordinance and the way in which these rights shaped industrial redevelopment. The chapter explores industrial property relations that were on the agenda of Chicago's place-dependent leaders by the 1940s. It describes the fortunes of Chicago's industry over the previous two decades, in which a growing number of people were looking to find ways to combat manufacturing decline, industrial blight, and a dwindling tax base.

Blight and the Transformation of Industrial Property

This chapter demonstrates how the discourse of blight shaped renewal and how the racialization of urban space underpinned housing markets and urban renewal. It talks about Chicago's political and business leaders who worked to turn some of Chicago's blighted land into productive industrial space. It also identifies agency officials who believed that the overhaul of some of Chicago's “waste lands” for industrial redevelopment would reverse decline by delivering jobs, taxes, and prosperity. The chapter describes the new set of industrial lands and the associated set of property relations that emerged out of urban renewal, which were created by all three levels of government and legitimized in the courts. It cites the Housing Act of 1937, which permitted land clearance and slum demolition for public housing and the Housing Act of 1949, which channeled federal funds to cities so that blighted districts could be redeveloped as predominantly residential.