As an outsider visiting the town of Holyoke, a small town in Western Massachusetts recently, my first impressions of the town weren’t initially of its underlying socio-economic problems, but rather, of the impressive but now derelict and gradually decaying shells of its former mills lining the western bank of the Connecticut river. It is these structures, commanding a view over the river, which reflect the area’s once proud, but now long faded industrial past and as such, I also couldn’t help wondering, “Why haven’t they been redeveloped yet?”
Once a thriving paper and textile milling centre in the north east of the country, the town of 40,000 now serves as an accurate representation of changing fortunes in the U.S. with nearly one-third of the city’s residents falling below the poverty line and an unemployment rate, crime rate, and high school dropout rate all hovering above the national average.
The story of Holyoke is increasingly an all too familiar one, and one that is currently being echoed by many similar post-industrial, blue collar towns across America also suffering from the departure of manufacturing which has amplified the chill of an already ravaging economic slowdown.
It was upon further research into these similarly afflicted industrial towns that I came across Dubuque.
In 1984, following a rapid decline in its base of manufacturing and mill working, the town of Dubuque, Iowa had an unemployment rate of 24%, the highest in the U.S. Since then, the town has turned around its fortunes, embracing a philosophy of sustainability, redeveloping the brownfield land left behind following the departure of industry and reinventing its identity as an urban area and business destination.
Dubuque now has an unemployment rate of 4.6%.
During its rise, the city has actively pursued a policy of sustainable redevelopment and the regeneration of unused areas previously associated with its industrial past in order to encourage the growth of business and bring people back into the historic centre of the town. This has been achieved through the continuing success of initiatives such as ‘Sustainable Dubuque’, which through a number of programs, aims to promote the organic regeneration and recognition of the city’s heritage.
One such scheme is the redevelopment of the Warehouse District, a mixed use transformation of former warehouse space into a combination of affordable apartments and ground floor retail space with sustainable design features, energy conservation systems, a redefined public realm and the preservation of art and heritage.
It has been through this use of sustainable regeneration and place-making, that Dubuque is leading the way in this form of experiment, successfully engaging with the architecture of its past, and in doing so, realigning the growth of the local economy in a way which has had marked results for the residents of the city.
Therefore the question remains, is this model the tonic required to provide the much needed regenerative cure for similar historical industrial centres such as Holyoke, and more importantly, can it be exported to those suffering most from the effects of years of neglect and in the grip of increasing economic hardship?
The short answer is maybe.
In an interview with the BBC, the mayor of Dubuque stated that he felt the regenerative results of his city could be replicated in any other with a population under 200,000, making towns such as Holyoke prime candidates for the Dubuque-treatment.
However it is still worth remembering, the timescale in which this redevelopment and change of life has taken place spans more than 20 years and continues to this day. While this may not provide the immediate quick-fix so desperately needed by post-industrial America, perhaps a slower more natural, community-led model for redevelopment such as this is what is actually needed. After all, the results of the scheme in Dubuque, where long-term sustainability and regeneration are concerned, appear to speak for themselves.
The Built Environment Review 
Great topic. The American urban landscape is certainly rife with examples of these kinds of problems/opportunities. We are littered with the casualties of industrial fallout, in some cases with cities that surpass the 200,000 mark. Having gone to school in Syracuse, I spent a lot of time around this kind of scarred urban landscape where around a quarter of the city’s population was below the poverty line, one third of the city’s annual budget came from Albany in the form of state aid and 50% of the property of the metro area was tax exempt. I was so interested in the problem statement that most of my graduate study in architecture went towards assessing this problem, in this case focusing on Syracuse itself as a case study.
I am definitely on board with adaptive reuse. I would go as far to say that our dilapidated post-industrial cities actually have the opportunity to become the greenest cities that we have in the country. We are presented with urban centers that are lush with great characteristics but still amazingly pliable for reinvention into what an updated vision of urbanity can be. These cities have connection to intercity transit, infrastructural systems, an educated work force and an elegant building stock.
At the same time, the Dubuque example seems thin, or perhaps short lived. I think Syracuse is an example of a city that has tried the same thing (renovating warehouses into residential lofts while supplementing retail) but has stumbled. I don’t believe that housing and retail alone are a solution. These cities need jobs that are material. They need exports. There needs to be a reason for someone to move to these places, not just a way for someone that already lives there to get a paycheck for selling consumer goods otherwise it’s just shuffling the same money around.
My proposal was that these cities could embrace a new generation of American industry that revolved around environmental products and services: an industrial ecology that could expand and contract over time whilst providing the remediation that the cities (and spaces around them) are in dire need of.
I hope we see more examples of this kind of work. The future of American urbanization, as well as the stemming of suburban sprawl, hangs in the balance.