The Clustering Effect of Industrial Sites: Turning Morphology into Guidelines for Future Developments within the Turin Metropolitan Area

Abstract

As urban societies seek to redefine themselves following the decline of manufacturing, they are left with physical and social transformations supported by successive stages of industrial growth and shrinking. At the same time, new paradigms are developed in urban planning to address the challenge of cities that are declining and cities whose population is rapidly rising. As such, these attempts raise the need to understand the impact of the street network on how cities thrive or shrink, additionally to social, cultural and economic changes. This paper uses space syntax methodology and a comprehensive mapping of industrial distribution to analyse the evolution of Turin (capital of car manufacturing in Italy) and its relationship to industry from 1920 to the present.

The paper focuses on the morphological clustering of industrial sites and how alternative concepts for planning development may be generated. The analysis showed that industry began within the urban core along the primary routes of global-scale movement. However, as a new era of economic production took place at the end of the 20^th century, the street network and industry followed a different spatial logic. Industrial activities spread along the periphery in island clusters in close proximity to global arteries of movement. Turin’s centre, on the other hand retained a backbone of integrated streets that enabled its reinforcement when industry relocated. The analysis of their historic development shows that new concepts should be informed by quantitative analysis of the evolution of the urban street network and its effects on economic activity, such that the configurational logical described may provide the basis for future guideline policies.