Post-Cappuccino City

Industry is the key concept in understanding contemporary cities and their planning. Industrialization meant the growth and expansion of cities and the emergence or new cities around large factories.  It also meant land speculation, overcrowded housing and poor sanitary and environmental conditions. These are the illnesses that modern urban planning set out to cure; they became its fundamental ethos. The solution was to get the industry out of town, and even out of the country as it turned out. No thanks to planners and their functionalist principles only, but to the globalisation of the economy.  As industrial production (following urban farming that was cast out earlier) had left, only shopping, parties, culture and office work remained. Enter the post-industrial city, the cappuccino-city.

The city of Tampere in Finland is a prime example of this development. It grew around the Tammerkoski rapids in the 19th Century. The crown jewel was the cotton mill established by the Scottish industrialist James Finlayson in 1820. It used to be the largest cotton mill in the Nordic countries, and the industrial production in the middle of the city lasted until the 1990s. Back then, making of things was still part of urbanity. Not anymore: although the heritage buildings are still there, and the area employs some 3000 people (approximately the same number as in the industrial period), the businesses and functions are very different: shops, restaurants, coffee shops, offices, museums. The post-industrial city is an alienated city: there is no direct contact between the consumer and the producer. At the same time, there is a growing arrogance among the post-industrial urbanites: the cities are seen as the engines of national economies, the centres of high productivity. But productivity of what, if not food or things? One could turn the argument around: without the industries producing things and the farms producing food 'out there', there would be nothing to shop or nothing to eat in the restaurants.

This paradox can be explained by what Saskia Sassen called 'command centres'. The cities are not independent, they are totally dependent on their hinterlands (national and international). They have, however, taken control. There is not a single coffee bean produced in New York, London or Singapore, but these are the centres where futures of coffee are bought and sold. And, of course, these are the places where the self-confident brokers are drinking their cappuccino in a fancy coffee shop in former industrial premises.

But is this the 'end of history', and if not, what would be the next step? Interestingly, scholars have started discussing the possibility of 'urban re-industrialization' or getting industrial production back to cities. Krzysztof Nawratek, who originally coined the term 'cappuccino city' in 2012, has organised several conferences on the topic, and his recently edited book "Urban Re-Industrialization" (Punctum Books 2017) has emerged out of these. But what would urban re-industrialization be? Naturally it must be post-functionalist, as I have wanted to call it elsewhere (di Marino & Lapintie 2017), that is, not based on the functional division typical of early modernist planning. Making of things, not just digits, must be re-allowed in the urban environment. If this can be done, all the other positive features of urbanity will follow: co-existence, proximity and synergy.

What would make this possible? There are several trends that have been widely discussed but not so much in this overall context. One of them is 3D-printing, or in general the decentralisation and customisation of production. If production can be done closer to the customers, responding to their individual tastes, even inviting them so see how their items are produced, why then take the trouble of organising overseas mass production? Decentralised production does not need large factory spaces, to say nothing of 'cities within cities' that industry complexes like Finlayson represented. Customers, not just workers are welcome.

Secondly, the global environmental requirements have become more central than the earlier environmental health targets. If the solution of the early modernists was to re-locate polluting industries out of the city, now these industries have to become cleaner anyway. New technologies and production processes can make it possible to adapt production to the requirements of the urban environment by avoiding smells and unnecessary noise. Interestingly, one of the factories around the Tammerkoski rapids, the Tako board mill,  has succeeded in continuing its production in the city centre by changing its production processes.

Thirdly, since recycling of materials has become a necessity for all kinds of industrial production, it would make sense to take care of recycling closer to where consumption happens (and the corresponding waste is produced). An example of this is the Industri[us] project described by Christina Norton in the aforementioned book, in which temporarily vacant sites are taken to use by a collaborative of designers and users working with waste materials ("up-cycling").

Fourthly, the city is a possible site where re-emergence of arts and crafts can happen. Even if handicraft cannot compete with the lower prices of globalised industrial production, it can provide higher quality and longer life-time (even over generations). As we know, the urbanites are ready to pay higher prices for branded products, even if the quality would not correspond to the price. Handicraft can provide a more genuine promise, particularly if the producer is known and visible in the city.

Thus urban re-industrialization is not just a day-dream (nor a nationalist political ideology), but there are some real windows of opportunity that are open for progressive urbanism. However, the authors of "Urban Re-Industrization" are also worried if this is just another chapter of the neo-liberal city. For Nawratek, the "Industrial City 2.0" is much more, "the opposite of the contemporary city, based on the extremely individualistic philosophy of competition." It is " the city based on overcoming selfishness and on the construction of a new, inclusive community..." (p. 68). I would not quite share this optimism, but I find the concept very interesting and the emerging urban economies worth following. Importantly, it may open our eyes and invite us to re-think the feeble arguments of the Neo-urbanist agenda in urban planning.

Nawratek, Krzysztof (2017, ed.) Urban Re-Industrialization.  Earth, Milky Way: Punctum Books.

di Marino, Mina & Kimmo Lapintie (2017) Emerging Workplaces in Post-Functionalist Cities. Journal of Urban Technology, Vol. 24, Issue 3,