ABSTRACT
Heavy industry (steel, locomotive building and textile) shed increasingly expensive labour and rationalized processes to increase productivity with a fraction of the labour force (see Figure 10.2) or disappeared in the onslaught of cheap overseas competition (e.g. the motor cycle industry). By the 1970s, with the three day week and the demise of trade union restrictive labour practices, it was generally recognized that the industrial economy, dominated by mass production, large organizations and a diverse management workforce mentality, had given way to a service economy. The stark separation between blue collar (manual work) and white collar (clerical, professional work) was being superseded by ‘rainbow’ collar work where the distinction between manufacturing and office functions was becoming blurred. Politically, this change, from the socialist ideal of the dignity of ‘real work’ at the blast furnace, or in the ‘Fordist’ factory, as distinct from the parasite nature of supporting clerical services, was hard to absorb. As the landscape of work changed, large tracts of industrial land and buildings were left vacant in the desperate hope that industrial jobs in real factories would return. Studies such as Industrial rehabilitation1 aimed to show that the fine industrial Victorian heritage, which was blighting so many of the inner city fringes through dereliction, could make a valuable contribution to stimulating the growth of small new enterprises, whilst at the same time rejuvenating our declining cities. Twenty years later, the role of small entrepreneurs providing added value services and innovative thinking is recognized. Multi-tenanted buildings with shared business services have become an accepted facet of the property market. The focus
is shifting from individual buildings to the multiple use of large building complexes and the comprehensive renewal of ‘brownfield sites’.
