OPINION: Cities should learn to love industry

In cities like Toronto and Vancouver, condo towers are going up on what used to be industrial land.
Especially on waterfront properties, it's goodbye lumber and cement, hello lattes and high rent. 

But what do we lose when industry leaves?

Peter Hall is an Associate Professor of Geography & Urban Studies at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
In this interview, he descibes the trade-offs of giving up industrial space.
While the loss of industrial land has economic implications, Hall believes the sanitization of space speaks to something more profound. 

We also have this more moral question of, where are the unwanted land uses going to go in our city?  And I don't think it's a stretch to say, if we're not willing to have industry next to us, maybe we're not willing to have poor people. Maybe we're not willing to have drug injection sites. And so we lose that sense that a city's a gritty, messy place.- Peter Hall, Simon Fraser University

The same way we discuss residential gentrification, Hall says industry is a victim of gentrification as well. 

There's a similar process with industrial gentrification. And so, small businesses which are part of having a diverse economy, artists and artist studios, they find themselves being priced out, because once the message is sent that you can build condos here, very soon industry can't afford to pay those rents.- Peter Hall, Simon Fraser University

Hall believes we need a political commitment to retain industrial space in cities, but also a social change of attitude, and come to accept that sometimes loud, sometimes dirty industries are part of a healthy city.