ABSTRACT
The development of suburban industrial districts has been an important element of the changing character of European, American and Canadian metropolitan fringe belts since the middle of the nineteenth century. In Europe, the character and extent of industrial decentralization has been well documented. Lace, hosiery, silk and shoes were manufactured in the industrial satellite villages surrounding the East Midland cities of Nottingham, Derby and Leicester (Palmer and Neaverson, 1992). Significant clusters of chemical, metal-working and textile firms were to be found in the Paris fringe areas of Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and Clichy from as early as the 1850s (Fontanon, 1988). The emergence of industrial suburbs such as Moabit and extensive industrial development elsewhere on the city periphery contributed to Berlin’s tremendous growth in this period (Waterhouse, 1993). Similarly, a range of suburban industrial districts has been identified as surrounding American and Canadian cities from as early as the middle of the nineteenth century. Agglomerations of manufacturing firms populated the expanding fringe of cities as different as highly compact Milwaukee and Montréal, and spread out Los Angeles and Chicago (Buder, 1967; Lewis, 1991,1994; Muller and Groves, 1979; Viehe, 1981). Unfortunately, we know little about the patterns and processes associated with suburban manufacturing in the United States and Canada. Despite the existence of a few case studies, the question of the role and importance of manufacturing on the urban fringe after 1850 has been neglected.
