Making Stuff in the Post-Industrial World

Most Americans are uncomfortable with a post industrial society in which jobs are either menial service jobs or filled by academics, creatives or IT people. Everybody remembers good paying industrial jobs that disappeared in the "big sucking sound" that presidential candidate Ross Perrot heard in the wake of NAFTA.

Vestiges of the glory days of industrial production: Carroll Camden
Industrial Park, Baltimore (photo: ArchPlan)

Now it is the Transpacific Partnership TPP that many fear will suck even more manufacturing jobs out of America. We have a sweet spot for manufacturing in our hearts which which grow fonder of it the more it dwindles. In that sense manufacturing is the new farming, an occupation once associated with hardship and exploitation, now part of a yearned for ideal. The dream of clean, well-paying local manufacturing and sustainable local farming bask in a warm glow.

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The reality, of course, is that manufacturing in the US hardly was romantic in the past nor is it growing in the present. Expressed as part of the gross domestic product (GDP) it is now a measly 12% in the US. That compares to a more substantial but still small 22% in Germany and a heftier 32% in China (World Bank). As a consolation prize, of course, there is always Greece with just 8%.

Once upon a time, 1950 to be precise, private sector goods, indeed, represented a much larger share, about 50% of the GDP,  with services being pretty much the other half. (Services now amount to nearly 70% of the private sector part of the GDP). Before getting too depressed, though, one should consider that  since WWII the GDP has continually grown which means that in chained dollars, 12% of today's 13.2 trillion dollar domestic product is still more than the 50% of the 2.27  trillion dollar product of 1950. 

Whether you call the business history of the past 15 years the age of hedge funds, the age of Google (or its rival Facebook, or its other rival Amazon, or its other rival Apple), the age of Walmart, or even the cautionary age of Lehman Brothers and Countrywide, in no case would you call it the age of American manufacturing. Manufacturing’s share of the total American economy has fallen by about the same amount as its workforce share: it went from about 20 percent in the early 1980s to just over 10 percent now. (James Fallows in the Atlantic, 2012)

Any success in bringing some part of production of goods back to our shores on account of quality, oversight, transport cost and logistics (on-demand and just-in-time supply), would not necessarily mean more jobs, just more goods and yet greater productivity. But that may vary widely from region to region as the realignment of the US auto industry demonstrates. One can only wonder and admire how the American South succeeded in capturing traditional automobile manufacturing jobs first in Lexington, KY (Toyota), later in Chattanooga, TN (Volkswagen) Spartanburg, SC (BMW) and Tuscaloosa, Al, (Daimler Benz).

Robots making cars in Spartanburg, SC

This southern success is especially astounding considering that the making of cars had already been likened to the making of wagon wheels a century earlier. Alas, while the South succeeded in garnering these facilities, wages there are lower than they used to be, unions are absent and workers pay has somehow been de-coupled from productivity. Like so many other things, goods production is not a zero sum game. Could previously depressed places see not only success in the production of traditional goods but also achieve good wages and significant employment?  This is a central question to legacy cities such as Baltimore.

Since 2007, Baltimore has lost 25,000 manufacturing jobs. According to The Baltimore Sun, Maryland’s manufacturing losses – the results of cutbacks, shutdowns and technological innovations requiring fewer employees – are among the nation’s steepest. This also underscores the outsized
harm done to workers without a college education and the stark contrast to the early part of the 20th century, when Maryland had more manufacturing plants than all but 14 states. (Abell report)

As noted America is a big country and 12% still amounts to a lot of manufacturing. Politicians love to talk about the prospect of bringing manufacturing jobs on shore again. With the shrinking labor content in the total cost of goods the effect of home production on a scale that can offset the productivity gains and associated "setting free" of labor forces is far from certain.But many more factors than on-shore versus of-shore are in play:

Artisans Asylum, Maker Space in  Massachusetts 

“A revolution is coming to the creation of things, comparable to the Internet’s effect on the creation and dissemination of ideas,” Linus Chung, CEO Lime Lab, in San Francisco

Enter the "makers." Academics, artists and futurists like to talk about  the "maker economy," a future state in which making things does not require mass production, massive capital outlays and a major industrial scale workforce but can instead be a cottage industry again as part of the new "sharing-economy.  All this, according to some projections, will empower many disenfranchised individuals to become economic players and entrepreneurs. Makers are not only somehow involved with digital matter involving 3-D printers (which one manufacturer lovingly calls "Maker Bots") but could also work on conventional machines but in a different setting. Maker spaces are imagined as being public access, cooperative efforts of many producers and productions under one roof.

This is actually an old idea. It originates with the Mechanics Institutes of the nineteenth century in Britain which served the purpose of educating and training the working class. It may remind some also of the Wiener Werkstätten, the Vienna workshops, which was an art-based cooperative of makers as well. Its motto

"Better to work 10 days on one product than to manufacture 10 products in one day."

may sound odd in a time when everything is trimmed to highest efficiency, but it may well address one aspect of the supposed renaissance of making, the emphasis on quality over quantity. However, the Vienna Workshops approach was elitist and not like the Mechanics Institutes (or later the Bauhaus), which were oriented towards the needs of the masses.

Is the maker movement the key to the expected "revolution" in goods production? Can it revive production of goods in the US? As Nikelle Snader notes in a recent article on Cheat Sheets:

Makers seek to take back the enormous manufacturing industry by creating and selling products themselves. Websites such as Etsy, for example, are great platforms where people market their wares.
The strength of the Maker Movement is that startups can happen organically, and quickly, as people begin to collaborate or create based on their ideas. They’re not reinventing the creative process, but the tools necessary to create and market their products are not only more accessible, but also more affordable.

As in any technological or production revolution, the beginnings often look quaint and the application of new technology silly. What are those 3-D printers for? Who needs a sculpture of oneself?
Maker spaces are there to widen the imagination through creativity combined with entrepreneurial spirit in a place that doesn't break the bank: In Baltimore Will Holman is a believer in maker space. 

A trained architect, he now manages BARCO for Laurens “Mac” MacLure who heads up this real estate non-profit to support the arts created by the Deutsch Foundation.  BARCO is in the process of creating not only one but two coop spaces, one more for for artists and one more for makers, both located in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District.

We welcome innovative ideas from individuals and organizations that are aligned with the Foundation's values and interests, which include but are not limited to Science and Technology, Arts and Culture, Education, Social Justice, and Community Development. (Robert W. Deutsch Foundation).

The foundation's support of the 34,000 square foot "Open Works" maker space on Greenmount Avenue indicates that the concept of the project is at the intersection of all of the foundation's "values and interests," all of them of interest specifically in the Baltimore, a city which just rediscovered how important a comprehensive view of jobs, culture, education, community development and social justice really is.

Open Works, rendering of the facility by Cho Benn, Holback Architects

Open Works will occupy a massive 1920 two-story structure once occupied by the Baltimore Railway Express operation near Penn Station that will shortly be converted for creative making and learning at a cost of about $5 million for construction alone. The program has everything from a cafe occupying a visible streetcorner with view of the historic Greenmount Cemetery, space for job training and workforce development, rental work spaces, workshops for textile, digital media, 3-D printing, wood metal, C&C machines and a computer lab. "We will not train and pray," Holman tells me, but cater to actual employment needs of the kind the local Abell Foundation recently identified in its "Best Prospects" report for jobs without a college degree. (Abell also supports the maker-space project).

The proposed Maker Space (left), the City Arts building in the
background and Greenmount Cemetery to the right
(photo: ArchPlan)

Standing on the three legs of education, membership and rental space, Open Works fits the bill of a maker space. Even though the project sits around the corner from Area 405, an artists cooperative and event space and the Station North Tool Library, small scale adaptations of the art and maker culture, Holman says that he is working in friendly partnership with both of those. "This isn't a situation where we share all one cake," he explains, "we all want to grow together." He cites a statistic that says that Baltimore had an increase of 67% in small scale manufacturing with 1-5 employees since 2003, a number he attributes to the Planning Department but which I could not immediately verify. In Holman's mind this is a clear indicator that Baltimore can, indeed, grow back a manufacturing base.

Holman in his research of maker spaces has found 318 such operations in the US, most are part-time and member-driven, some institution-based, some for-profit and some not. Two facilities he mentioned as good precedents for his Baltimore project are the 40,000 sf Artisans Asylum in Somerville, MA and the Columbus, OH based Idea Foundry. The Idea Foundry describes itself in these words:

The Columbus Idea Foundry is Ohio's premier Makerspace. We're a community workshop, learning center, and creative space.
We provide training on and access to tools and technology from the conventional to the high-tech. CIF members can use our tools for their business, artistry, and hobbies.
Our community is diverse, open, and friendly. We are entrepreneurs, fabricators, inventors, prototypers, designers, craftsmen, artisans & artists.

I found it surprising that Holman also used the YMCA as an organizational model; like there, he points out, in a non-profit setting resources are pooled, the facilities are supported by members and they are open to the public.

The cavernous interiors of the proposed maker space on Greenmount Ave
(photo ArchPlan)

So where does all this get us on our original question, whether or not the US will become a place that “makes stuff” again? I suppose, the answer is yes and no. It won't likely employ large parts of the work force again (the no) but it may well expand beyond the sectors of what is manufactured in the US today (the yes).

Maker spaces are no substitute for an industrial base of a local or national economy but they are seeds that provide a service that leverages people skills through training. The assumption is that there will be discovery and development of goods and products that lend themselves to the type of decentralized production that can be provided by the new sharing economy and the entrepreneurs who embrace it. Homo sapiens is essentially a maker, a "homo faber" per the Latin term and title of the late Swiss writer Max Frisch’s most well known novel. Wo-Man is not made to just sit, but to create, touch, smell and listen, one to change the world.

The maker culture, combined with creativity and technology holds the promise that making could one day leave the clutches of mass production, the alienating regime of corporate making within an abstract money-based system, devoid of pride or creativity. The maker culture conflates art and making in ways that transcend both, representing a future in which basic necessities are silently furnished by robots, but quality goods are made by makers with love, pride and in a self determined manner.
There is a lot of wishful thinking in this future, but one thing is sure, production won't remain the way it is. Opportunities can only be realized if they have been thought of,  described and seized. Who would be better skilled to detect the winds of change than artists? We will hear a lot more of maker-spaces, I am sure.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
edited by Ben Groff, JD

For daily updates on design, urban stuff and Baltimore see Community Architect Daily

Related articles on this blog:
The Incredible Power of Open Source 3-D Makers

Links:
Facts about Manufacturing
Understanding the Decline of Manufacturing
How Maker Spaces help local Economies
The Maker Movement is Taking Manufacturing Back to its Roots
3 Ways the New Manufacturing Movement is Changing How the World Works

BBJ about the Open Works Maker Space