A city that makes things: reconstituting manufacturing

Abstract

Recent debates about manufacturing in Australia emphasize the primacy of macroeconomic conditions (high dollar, cheap overseas imports), but provide limited discussion of the dynamics and contingencies within cities and regions that shape outcomes. This paper acknowledges that macroeconomic forces have urban/regional effects, but does not simplistically assume that decline is 'inevitable'. For many reasons, not least the pressing need to reconfigure forms of production and consumption in light of climate change, manufacturing is likely to remain on the agenda. Given this, we explore the proposition that the future of manufacturing will also depend on endogenous, path dependent factors within cities and regions, as well as how discourses about manufacturing and the capacities of local workers are promulgated in policy, media and industry circles. The argument is illustrated by building on regional ABS data and qualitative sector-specific projects, all in Wollongong, NSW - a city especially troubled by the prospects of declining manufacturing and busily contemplating what changes are needed. Manufacturing economies can and are being remade - but the pertinent questions are in what form we might wish them to take, and what existing resources, assets and capacities make transformation possible.