Cities as Industry (S01-EP02)
In this second episode of Super Urban, we unravel another fundamental layer of urban development: the city as industry. Once shaped by ideological and religious order, industrial modernity reconfigured cities into machines of production—factories of progress, extraction, and acceleration. Industry wasn’t just an economic function; it was an urban ideology, a new mapping of power.
For centuries, smoke rising from factories symbolized economic vitality and civic ambition. But industry also brought stratification, pollution, and a deep entanglement between prosperity and environmental collapse. What happens when the engines of progress become the mechanisms of decline? Have we reached the end of industry, or simply its next mutation?
Conrad Hamann and co-hosts discuss how cities like Melbourne, Sydney, and Geelong were shaped by industry, their urban layouts and economies built on manufacturing. As sites like Sunshine and Geelong decline, the discussion extends to how industrial zones adapt to shifting geopolitical and economic forces?
Former industrial areas—Docklands, Pyrmont, and Fisherman’s Bend—offer case studies in transformation. Have cities merely replaced factories with fulfillment centres, coal with data, and production lines with algorithms? Amazon’s logistics hubs, Melbourne Innovation District, and Silicon Valley’s tech campuses suggest a new industrial order, where urban space is optimized for digital economies.
Meanwhile, megaprojects like NEOM and The Line push industrial urbanism to extremes. Do they offer solutions, or warnings? Has the city itself become a fulfillment centre—an infrastructure of endless optimization? If industry no longer requires proximity, what binds the city together? Is the city itself the industry? a logistical playground, a warehouse of desires?
‘SUP is hosted by Ian Nazareth, Graham Crist and Christine Phillips
Show Notes and References
1. Industrial Heritage & Urban Identity
Footscray Amphitheatre
A contemporary integration of cultural and public space with the area’s historical industrial identity.
Sunshine Harvester Works, Melbourne
A key site in Australia’s manufacturing history, particularly in agricultural machinery.
National Museum of Australia
Museums Victoria
General Motors–Holden, Dandenong
A major automotive manufacturing site that influenced Melbourne’s economy and suburban growth.
Greater Dandenong Council
2. Speculative & Planned Cities
The Multifunction Polis (MFP)
A controversial high-tech urban proposal in the 1980s–90s that evolved into a technology park at Mawson Lakes, Adelaide.
Taylor & Francis Abstract
Adelaide AZ Overview
Broadacre City – Frank Lloyd Wright (1932)
A vision for decentralised, agrarian urbanism fusing nature with low-density infrastructure.
Broadacre City PDF
3. Corruption, Policy & Urban Form
Fraudest Urbanism
A term describing unethical urban planning practices leading to environmental and community harm.
Corruption in Urban Planning – Transparency International Report (2023)
Read the Report (PDF)
1980s Economic Rationalism in Australia
The rise of market-driven policies (privatisation, deregulation) reshaped both architectural production and economic governance.
JSTOR Article 1
JSTOR Article 2
4. Australia’s Built Environment
Federation Square, Melbourne
An iconic and contested cultural precinct. Key figures include John Macarthur, Graham Crist, Gevork Hartoonian, and Zara Stanhope.
Architecture Australia Feature
The Australian Ugliness – Robin Boyd (1960)
A critique of visual clutter, imitation, and poor planning in Australian architecture.
Text Publishing
5. First Nations, Place & Industry
Pre-European Trading & Meeting Grounds – Wurundjeri Country
Sites such as the Yarra River, Royal Botanic Gardens, and the Parliamentary Precinct reflect long-standing cultural landscapes.
Wurundjeri Corporation
City of Yarra – Aboriginal History
EMG – Parliamentary Precinct
6. International Reference Projects
Bartlesville Price Tower, Oklahoma – Frank Lloyd Wright (1956)
A rare skyscraper by Wright, expressing his organic design principles in an industrial city.
Price Tower
John Portman’s Hotel Atriums – Atlanta
Portman’s dramatic multi-storey interior spaces transformed the hotel typology in the 60s–70s.
Atlanta History Centre
Roche & Dinkeloo – General Motors Technical Center
An example of socially attuned modernist industrial architecture.
Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates
7. Popular Culture & Urban Values
1980s American Soap Operas – Dallas and Dynasty
Reflective of aspirational, industrial wealth and domestic drama, mirroring the values of urban economic power.
Watching Dallas – Ien Ang (1985)
A seminal cultural study of how global audiences interpret melodrama and urban aspiration.