How can architecture contribute to the sustained economic prosperity of a neighborhood, city and region?

This is a tough question that depends on precise metrics and quantitative analysis. To push the narrative of my thesis closer to reality, I am leaning heavily on PDC’s Economic Development Strategy (http://www.pdxeconomicdevelopment.com/)

Portland Economic Development Strategy

This document provides a variety of performance indices against which I can evaluate architectural programs for efficacy and fitness in the local, regional, and international economic ecosystem. I interpret the document as a roadmap for developing the existing strengths and unique offerings of Portland’s economic foundation.

My thesis will place particular emphasis on emerging markets such as “Clean Tech and Sustainable Industries” (CTSI) and Advanced Manufacturing. I elect to respond to these categories because they are energy, space, and workforce intensive. These markets have elevated material and energy streams, and I expect that opportunities for energy/material synergies at the neighborhood or district level will emerge as my research continues. Additionally, businesses in these sectors can be economic powerhouses and potential catalysts for their supply chain. For every dollar of manufactured product, $1.37 is invested in the local economy, indicating a net positive flow of resources into the community. In other words, manufacturing businesses typically create work and commercial exchange. This local participation is important to the neighborhoods in which these businesses reside. Even though the hope is that these start-ups will sell products far and wide, their supply chains, workforce, and capital expenditures remain local.

Granular Development

The picture I wish to paint is not so much that of a factory, but more of a collection of fabrication laboratories. The building’s design will reflect an emphasis on fostering small businesses and start-ups. This goal represents nascent values both social and economic. Many of Portland’s successful businesses and industries started in neighborhoods serving local markets, then expanded to national and even international distribution. Examples of home grown enterprises that have been nurtured to national prominence in Portland neighborhoods include brewers and distillers, coffee roasters, chocolatiers, and tea importers. As the price-to-play continues to fall for small-scale manufacturing, I believe that this growth potential can apply to fabrication-centric start-ups. {Is this a thing yet?} This project will seek to reduce those barriers-to-entry even further. This is small business cultivation. This is what the PDC calls economic gardening.

Economic gardening is premised on the belief that local entrepreneurial firms, rather than firms recruited from outside the region, are the engine for the creation of wealth and new jobs, and the role of the city is to provide a nurturing environment within which these small firms can flourish. An economic gardening program focuses on “gazelles,” small firms with fast growth potential, with a particular emphasis on firms capable of selling products and services outside the region and internationally. 

This incubator idea has been executed in the business realm with great success internationally and within the city itself ( Portland Incubator Experiment, Portland Seed Fund and Upstart Labs). These businesses provide a variety of services for startups, ranging from securing capital investment to website design. Essentially, services such as these let start-ups concentrate on what they’re good at (their product) by leveraging the skills of others to polish and refine the public face and the day-to-day operations of their business. I am interested in asking these companies if they see anyway that the space within which they work could be configured to more effectively facilitate their operations.

In chemistry the addition of a catalyst to a chemical reaction results in higher reaction rate than an uncatalyzed reaction under the same conditions. I believe that the built environment can participate in this metaphor by bringing synergistic business interests together under the same roof, accelerating the development of ideas, products, and services.