Past
For the past century and a half, the United States has been a country that makes things. Through the 19th century, we transitioned from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. It began with cotton textiles and wooden products, and with emerging technologies grew into an economy of railroads, steel, automobiles, and heavy machinery. The Great Depression was a blow to manufacturing and the economy as a whole, but during the World Wars, the economy shifted from peacetime to wartime production and back again. We’ve made everything from locomotives to airplanes, food products to precision-machined components, microprocessors to farm equipment. Our cities were the centers of manufacturing through most of this time, and they are planned and built for manufacturing. Manufacturers chose to locate in cities because they had access to a large and able workforce, a huge market of potential customers, and various modes of transportation for their goods. Manufacturers in cities benefit from the proximity to other firms and build meaningful relationships with local partners.
For the past few decades, manufacturing employment in the United States has been declining, but manufacturing remains a central part of the economy. Many people talk about the damage done by offshoring, but America has never stopped making things. The Urban Made Initiative exists to bring attention to the things we make, and encourage this vital economic activity to happen in our cities.
