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January 16, 2011
Made in Brooklyn: a 1993 warning about the loss of manufacturing for housing, more poignant today; is real estate really economic development?
Atlantic Yards Report
The documentary Made in Brooklyn, about the importance of manufacturing and the shortsightedness of trading industrial space for housing and offices, was made in 1993, but the message remains valid, if ever more poignant.
(The filmmaker is Isabel Hill, known for her subsequent Brooklyn Matters documentary on Atlantic Yards.)
After all, Made in Brooklyn was filmed before this decade's real estate boom, and some of the manufacturers featured in the documentary, notably the Domino Sugar plant in Williamsburg (right), have closed, and the Domino site is slated to become the New Domino, a development second in size to Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.
The reviews and comments were mostly laudatory, though one critic pointed out Hill could have asked about salaries and benefits, and noted that some small manufacturers are sweatshops. Still, manufacturing has long been a source of good jobs for immigrants and others who may lack book learning but can use their skills.
There's an argument for local manufacturing, one that remains for such things as immigrant food services, the garment industry, and support for live theater: Brooklyn offers proximity to consumer markets and access to a large pool of labor.
Author Pete Hamill, who rose from manufacturing work to a writing career, gets some zingers in on the value of labor.
The conventional wisdom
Academic Mitchell Moss offers the standard, not implausible, explanation about the loss of manufacturing: factories left for land designed for mass assembly, access to highways, and locations with low-cost labor.
What's the future for low-skilled workers? Building services and building maintenance.
But you can't build yourself out of a recession, right?
Posted by steve at January 16, 2011 10:57 AM