Chapter 1: What historical significance does Allentown hold in American manufacturing?
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the OddLots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
And I'm Joe Weisenthal.
Joe, do you ever discover little cultural blind spots that you had in your life?
I'm sure.
Like things you missed?
Where are you going with this?
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Chapter 2: How did Allentown's industrial policies evolve over the years?
There was this ā you know, in 2008, it was right kind of in the ā early days of the global financial crisis. There's some concern about how we would recover economically, what we would do. But these early investments in manufacturing were, from what I could see, looking ahead, something we shouldn't turn our backs on.
There was this seemingly healthy manufacturing economy in place in the Lehigh Valley. And it felt like
it felt like there was an opportunity to build for the future i worked with our ceo our executive director at that time to start thinking about how we might position the area as a place where you could bring smaller footprint manufacturing we knew we had this building stock of buildings that were smaller than 100 000 square feet sometimes on multiple stories.
It was a kind of gravity flow model of manufacturing where you would load in raw material at the top of the building. And as it gained weight, it would drop down the building for a final finishing on the ground floor and then shipping. We felt like there was an opportunity to kind of leverage the existing industrial inventory to attract manufacturers that were More boutique.
I remember reading an article in the Wall Street Journal in maybe 2009 or 2010 about a bag manufacturer in San Francisco who was like very proud of being in San Francisco. I was like, this is I think there's something here for us. I reached out to the manufacturer at the time. This was around the same time as the rise of maker spaces and 3D printing was coming online.
It looked like you could do some stuff in a smaller form factor. We kept thinking this is a chance for us with these strong roots in manufacturing to bring some of it back. We got deep into it and really explored.
We formed something called the Urban Manufacturing Alliance in collaboration with San Francisco and the Pratt Institute in New York and our friends in the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation and in Detroit to just kind of bring cities who are interested in manufacturing together. We started talking about reshoring or onshoring at that time, but it felt distant.
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Chapter 3: What strategies is Allentown implementing for reindustrialization?
filling it with beverages and shipping it back to New York.
This is so core, like Ricardo Hausmann coded stuff. Like, okay, you have this one industry and then you have innovation and an adjacent industry.
Super... Monkeys swinging from trees.
I'm also, yeah, I'm also just like learning all these terms. I, you know, gravity-based manufacturing. I hadn't, or weight gaining. This is all fantastic stuff.
Weight gain industry is, I think, what we're both doing in Madrid.
That's what we're both doing in Madrid. That's Hamon gaining. That's right.
Yeah.
We should have run a marathon and then we could have compensated for all that. What are like, you know, obviously this is all against the backdrop of this vortex of manufacturing going to China largely, et cetera. When people think, you know, you're at a conference like this and probably a lot of mayors are interested in. re-industrialization, et cetera.
What types of industries are good candidates generally for thinking of what should be built locally? Something like plastic bags or bags, it's like, well, I don't know, maybe that could be offshore. What are strong candidates for what is durable here?
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Chapter 4: How does rezoning impact manufacturing in Allentown?
That's what you dial in on. And so whatever they're doing nationally, you're just worried about residents.
One reason that people are very excited or that people have an affinity towards manufacturing is the jobs, right? And you mentioned the jobs and people saying people go to work. Another reason, particularly over the last several years or the last post-COVID, is for national security reasons, not wanting to rely on China or other countries for really critical things.
However, some of these most advanced industries, they're not particularly going to be job heavy, right? There's a lot of robotics and increasing automation. Is there a disconnect between the sort of again, maybe emotional, maybe like the sort of romantic notions that people have about manufacturing versus the reality of the actual labor intensivity of some of these industries?
I think that from the mayor's perspective, I probably am more in that kind of romantic world, right? Like where we're just kind of like, yeah, we envision a world in which people will always be putting their hands on stuff, right? One way or another. And
When you get into a higher technology where, like, we already have robots doing, like, precision surgery, presumably some of the precision manufacturing is going to be better done with a robotic hand than the steady hand or strong back of somebody on a line. I do think that as you, like, the... There's still... And this is a vibe that I'm starting to get.
Mayors tend to pick up, like... Because we're on the ground.
Yeah.
We start to hear the vibes before they become national vibes. But I think that there's a very strong... At least in my city and some other cities that I've visited, there's, like, a strong, like, handmade or, like, a rejection of the robots and AI, whether it's art or, like, the produced goods. I don't know if anybody...
I don't know what the logical end to that is, but I think there's, on the consumer side, there's still a desire. I think people romanticize some of the product, right? And they'd rather have something that people have made on the jobs side of it.
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Chapter 5: What role do data centers play in Allentown's economic strategy?
So much interesting stuff there.
Also the mixed zoning I found really interesting because it is true. If you think about industry, you know, even 10 or 20 years ago, it was much more polluting and noisy and disturbing than it is now. And so you can have, in an era of high-tech manufacturing, you absolutely could have mixed-use neighborhoods and buildings.
Why not? Right. So you just have to update the zoning to reflect the reality that it's not going to be automatically repellent to the neighbors.
And then everyone can walk to work with their lunch boxes.
Yeah.
All right. Shall we leave it there?
Or the bike to work.
Or bike to work. Yeah. Okay. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. You can follow me at Tracy Allaway.
And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at TheStalwart.
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Chapter 6: What industries are considered 'weight-gaining' and why are they important?
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