Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Sustainable Industries Journal.
What happens to a region when land is scarce and demand for housing goes up? First of all, prices for land and housing start to increase. But the opportunity to make money is a powerful draw.
Land that is underutilized for housing—especially industrial lands—becomes a prime target for rezones. Why keep big chunks of a city locked up with warehouses, rail spurs, and smokestacks when dense, compact communities are far more sustainable?
One answer is jobs. Industrial advocates argue that heavy industry creates lots of living wage jobs. But what about reducing carbon emissions and promoting sustainable neighborhoods? The conflict between jobs and industry on the one hand and housing and neighborhoods on the other might be resolved by new technologies that could put manufacturing and housing in the same place.
A great example of one of these new technologies is 3-D printing, and it’s a revolution in efficiency in light manufacturing. It is already impacting our lives. The crown on my back molar was made in my dentist’s office using a small device that converts Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) drawings into an actual in-house manufactured crown, saving the delay and expense of going to a lab.
My dentist took a picture of my tooth, mapped out the crown on a screen, shaped it using CAD, hit print and less than an hour later a device about the size of a small espresso machine kicked out my crown. With some adjustments she was able to fit it to my tooth and I was on my way.
How does it work? The best way to answer this question is to watch a machine in action. The printer is able to duplicate CAD drawings in three dimensions by laying down layer after layer of powder and a binding agent to the correct specifications. The object can then be dusted off, trimmed, and used. The technology is now being used for models of parts or products like my new crown.
But more can be done with the technology. One team from Stratasys & Autodesk produced a first full-scale turbo-prop aircraft engine. Watching the process is pretty amazing because the engine is produced entirely using the printing technique, and the engine actually works.
So how can technology like this preserve jobs, create new ones, and at the same time promote sustainable dense neighborhoods? First, zoning was created to separate different uses. Manufacturing should be done in one place and living done somewhere else, or so goes the theory of contemporary land use. And it makes sense. Who wants to live next to a huge, belching steel mill? It’s loud, noisy and unhealthy. Land use made it a priority to keep these uses apart.
But technologies like 3-D printing could reshape the way we think of manufacturing. A family could live above or near a facility that produces parts and models using a 3-D printer; it would be quieter, cleaner and healthier. Imagine a neighborhood that combined manufacturing using this technology with compact communities. The result would be jobs and housing in the same place.
But this solution would require big thinking by local city councils, labor unions, housing advocates, and neighborhood leaders. Of course not everything can be built using this technology. But if local and state government encouraged and provided incentives for partnerships between manufacturers, unions and non-profit housing developers, we could see neighborhoods built to accommodate jobs and housing for people that need them most.
One neighborhood here in Seattle immediately comes to mind: Interbay. Interbay is a lot like what the Pearl District in Portland used to be; a mix of warehouses and light manufacturing. But a lot of Interbay’s warehouses are empty and there isn’t much infrastructure and the infrastructure that is there is decaying. The area is low lying between the Magnolia bluff and Queen Anne Hill and is close to the Port of Seattle terminals to the south and rail lines. Interbay could become a world class model of how to put manufacturing and housing together in a healthy, sustainable way.
Industry no longer has to be a pig in the parlor when it comes to local land use. We can have dense, walkable, and green neighborhoods and have some manufacturing use as well. The first step is to support the industry with incentives like tax credits and grants to keep new developments in technology coming. But even more important cities in the region need to start rethinking zoning as a strategy for bringing uses closer together rather than pushing them part. That, in many ways, is even more revolutionary that designing plane parts on a computer and manufacturing them by clicking ‘print.’
Sean Pender
RogerInterbay has a giant train yard running right through it. How does one make a livable neighborhood in an area with freight trains running through it and where, presumably, diesel fumes and associated particulate matter are higher than in surrounding areas?
Matt the Engineer
Time to electrify the trains? Too expensive? Then time for better air quality standards for trains? Trains are much more efficient than trucks, and I belive there’s more truck shipping from our ports than train shipping. Yet we’re building up Yesler Terrace without a thought to air quality next to I-5.The end solution should be that we don’t allow unhealthy pollutants in our air, whether it be from industry or transportation.
Sean Pender
MattWhile I agree with you about air quality standards, I don’t think I made my point about noise very well. Having lived near both Interbay and the Yesler Terrace Housing projects, I can tell you that living near I-5 is much less noisy than living near the train yard on Interbay. Living and working near a noisy, squeaky, loud, active freight yard is less than desirable. The noise from I-5 is less offensive as it tends to meld into white noise at most times. Not ideal certainly, but better than loud, sharp noises at intermittent and non-predicable hours
Matt the Engineer
I’m not sure how large of an issue noise is there. There seem to be quite a few homes on the nearby hillside looking down on the rail yard – many of them fairly high value homes.Noise can be mitigated. Double pane windows are standard these days, and if we care enough about noise we can even lid the rail yard and connect Magnolia to Interbay (or if money’s a concern, throw a cheap steel roof over the rail yard with an inch of insulation).
Matt the Engineer
Thinking about this further, a roof could: a. Capture dirty air. Just put scrubbers at a central ventilation fan.b. Capture clean water. Right now who knows how much oil and chemicals is running into the Sound from this rail yard. We can filter roof runoff and dump clean water into the Sound, leaving contaminants under the roof.