Manufacturing in the United States has been battered and beaten by a host of volatile and heavy factors.While some manufacturing was “urbanizing” due to opportunities presented by military base closures where the base was close to an urban center, other manufacturing processes were moved overseas or onto previously “useless” isolated and rural land in America. The abandoned urban manufacturing plants and facilities were easily converted into housing, artists lofts, cultural centers, retail, light manufacturing and other uses.
The opportunities provided by overseas locations to internationalize manufacturing, with the incentives of cheap land, far less governmental oversight, and alarmingly cheap and young labor resulted in a major exodus of plants and jobs from America. But, an equally volatile counter force was the socially conscious American and European consumer who was ready to immediately and massively boycott any company that made it’s products under intolerable conditions, including using child labor.
Another volatile factor was the base closure frenzy of the 1990s. Decommissioned military bases offered well established and well maintained facilities and infrastructures, great deals and tax breaks for companies willing to lease space and set up shop. In the San Francisco Bay megalopolis, decommissioned military facilities, all of which were situated on above premium real estate, were quickly transferred over to civilian uses.
The third volatile factor was the federal imperative for every county, canton, or parish in the nation to set up “Economic Development Corporations” as part of their long and short term strategic planning programs. These corporations were to refine the processes for attracting business to the community. As a result, far more effective, well organized programs for attracting businesses of all types resulted in a highly charged, competitive atmosphere, where every corporation, large or small, could count on being aggressively courted by multiple economic development corporations across the country.
The third volatile factor was the developers who used sophisticated methods to find the optimal housing, commercial, service and other opportunities that sprung up whenever a major manufacturing facility took advantage of cheap, unpopulated rural lands and great tax and other incentives. Developers also received incentives to create the perfect storm of employee housing, commercial, civil educational, and other infrastructures needed to grow whole cities on what used to be considered “useless land” in states across the nation.
Then the final volatile factor: the 2008 economic collapse occurred. In spite of the massive loss of investor’s money on probability based investments, there was still opportunity for massive companies to merge, buy out failing firms, and to expand their operations based on new technologies and global markets. This has caused massive changes in the location, composition, size, centralization, decentralization and other aspects that are affecting all facets of the internationalization, urbanization and suburbanization of manufacturing.
