Industrial parks as economic engines

Industrial parks have always held a fascination for me. I’ve previously written about the role of industrial parks as a prototype for form-based-code principles. I think the notion deserves more examination, especially as it relates to how industrial parks and their child, the business park, have become economic engines, and at the same time examples of why form-based-code should not be universally applied to a city.

Although industrial parks have had only a spotty rate of success as sanctuaries for true “industry” — e.g. large scale manufacturing — a visit to an industrial park today will show that they have a fairly low vacancy rate. With large, easily subdivided buildings and robust energy and transportation infrastructure, industrial parks are home to businesses ranging from wholesale auto parts distributors to artisinal coffee roasters to small professional offices. Nearly any scale and type of business can be found located within today’s so-called industrial parks.

Where are the smokestacks? Provvista, in Northwest Portland’s Guilds Lake Industrial Park, is hardly an example of what early 20th century planners meant by “industry.” Yet this company — a gourmet foods distributor — is just one of many examples of the vastly scalable and diverse success of the re-tasked economic role of industrial parks.

In many ways, this unforeseen versatility has made the industrial park — re-tasked as a dedicated business zone — a wild success. These districts, set aside specifically for the needs of commerce with wide and gently curved streets, easy freeway access, broad and inexpensive to build upon land, and few residential neighbors have become great economic engines for cities. Their flexibility and relatively low cost of entry when compared with traditional urban core properties makes them a scalable tool for entrepreneurs. They have become both an engine and an incubator of business.

In the Portland region, especially, this is a very important task. Oregon has a significant reliance on property and income taxes. Small manufacturers pay property tax on their manufacturing equipment, and their employees bolster local income tax rolls. Even if such issues were not significant concerns, as others have noted there are other benefits to industrial jobs, notably the social benefits of a city with a healthy middle class.

Yet, even as industrial parks have, through the happy accident of progress, proven to be poster children of how and why form-based-code is a powerful tool for positive urban growth, they are also great examples of why pure form-based-code should not be applied universally across a metropolitan region.

The key strengths of industrial parks include, amongst other traits, their cheap horizontal land uses and a transportation infrastructure that does not need to accommodate frequent single occupancy vehicle movements as would be found in a purely retail environment. Mixing small retail or residential into industrial parks can lead to significant conflicts, including a slow erosion of the effectiveness of that area as a business district, as has been seen first in the Pearl District and can be currently witnessed in the Central Eastside Industrial District, as the area transitions.

The problem, of course, is that if low density business districts — industrial parks reborn — are to remain a vital part of the urban fabric, how can they be integrated without relying on 20th Century transportation and land use models? Spread out and generally distant from the urban core, these areas are almost always exclusively automobile commuting territories. Introducing transit to them is usually difficult as the ridership bases are usually low except during peak hours, but if the system does not operate often enough or fast enough it is unable to attract significant ridership. This — adapting the industrial/business park to modern urban form — will be one of the great challenges of the 21st Century civic revival.