![]() ![]() metros seeing a growth in activity driven by one major industry metros heavily focused on the innovation economy and advanced manufacturing large metros with a diversified manufacturing base smaller metros that are growing the fastest, both in terms of population and jobs and metros with a strong artisanal / craft production sector). These metros represented a cross-section in terms of size, geographic region, and dominant manufacturing trends or “typologies” (i.e. Phase 1 helped us set the context across the country for urban manufacturing by analyzing publicly available data over a ten-year period (2004-2014) from 16 metropolitan areas. State of Urban Manufacturing was conducted in two phases, beginning in early 2016. There are other organizations that we haven’t yet worked with and we encourage Detroit stakeholders to continue to increase the coverage of this tool, which will help producers-and the organizations that support them-match the right resources to businesses’ needs or identify where gaps exist. To help ensure that, we have developed a “manufacturing ecosystem map” for each city that includes all of the organizations we worked with directly as part of the State of Urban Manufacturing process. Finally, we hope the conversations we have had with businesses and stakeholders as part of this study have created relationships that will continue to grow the sector and the promise it holds for cities. We will release a snapshot of our findings for each of the six inaugural State of Urban Manufacturing cities, as well as a national report, that identifies promising practices that might be shared among cities to help these firms succeed. Our goal is to begin to understand what the small-batch manufacturing sector looks like, who its entrepreneurs and employees are, and what cities can do to help these firms thrive and grow into larger jobs generators. We have collected information directly from hundreds of manufacturers- including over 100 in Detroit-on the nature and challenges of their businesses we also spoke with scores of Detroit-based organizations that support these firms. Longer term, we hope this information serves as a foundation to expand our understanding across the country. ![]() The Urban Manufacturing Alliance conceived the State of Urban Manufacturing study as a way to fill this information gap and begin to give our members and other decision-makers information they can act on immediately in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Portland (Ore.). The impact, potential, and needs of these businesses are poorly understood. The result is a dearth of understanding by city policy makers on this burgeoning sector within their boundaries. What’s more, the data that do exist are often at the metropolitan level, which can swamp nuances as this sector grows and establishes itself in modest-sized clusters at the hearts of cities. As a result, they often do not fall neatly into the data collection categories that government has used to classify manufacturers for generations. These innovative businesses often combine design, art, and production. But members of the Urban Manufacturing Alliance (UMA), including many city decision makers, told us they know remarkably little about smaller scale manufacturers. ![]() Increasingly, cities see this emerging sector as rich with possibility for promoting entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth. Firms get to tap a rich labor market as well as dense and often sophisticated consumer markets for their finished goods. Manufacturing-particularly specialized, small-batch production-benefits from being in cities.
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