INDUSTRIAL LAND IN A POST-INDUSTRIAL CITY District of ...

District of Columbia Industrial Areas Study DC Office of Planning
Prepared by Phillips Preiss Shapiro Associates, Inc.
Sample Industrial Land Use Policies
While the District is unique in its economy, function, and political status, other American cities
are facing many of the same land use pressures. This report has considered other cities’
perspectives and industrial land use policies, and, in some cases, borrowed best practices from
their experiences.
San Francisco, CA: Production, Distribution, and Repair 33
San Francisco is similar to the District in several ways, notably in that it is also a city with very limited
amounts of land and where industrial land is under pressure from “higher and better” uses including
housing and high-tech sector offices. Recognizing the need to develop appropriate land use policies to
accommodate industry, housing, and office development, the San Francisco Planning Department
completed a study of its industrial areas in 2002. Its study resulted in a new framework with which to view
the import of industry to the city’s economy. Instead of using the term “industrial,” which conjures images
of heavy “smoke-stack” industry, the terms production, distribution and repair (PDR) are used.
Production uses include building contractors, printing firms, and light manufacturers such as specialty
signs and building mechanical systems. Distribution includes warehousing, trucking, wholesaling, and
retailing operations which cater both industries and public. It is essential that these firms have good
access to rail and road transportation. Finally, Repair includes building systems and automobile repair,
including municipal fleet maintenance garages, and serves both other industrial users as well as the
general public.
The report recognizes that PDR businesses provide fast and efficient support services for core sectors of
the San Francisco economy (including property development, tourism and hospitality), that PDR provides
employment options for skilled and unskilled residents without advanced degrees, and that PDR helps
stabilize the local economy and reduce some of the costs of doing business in the city. The report urges
land use planning that considers the needs (space that is affordable, flexible, and away from housing) of
PDR users.
Chicago, IL: Planned Manufacturing Districts 34
Chicago’s experience in the 1980s was very similar to what the District is experiencing today. Rezonings
in and around Chicago’s manufacturing areas allowed residential and commercial land uses to encroach
upon industry. Throughout the 1980s, as rezonings became commonplace, manufacturers had less and
less confidence that they could safely invest their capital on in-place expansion. Thus a dwindling supply
of appropriate land, combined with high taxes and labor costs, conspired to drive more and more industry
from the city.
33 See San Francisco Planning Department, 2002
34 Adapted from Appendix B, Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development, 2001.
See also University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2005.
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