Processes of industry and economic exchange have significantly and continually defined the
underlying structure and formal characteristics of the American city. Contemporary ‘distributed’
systems of economy and industry rely on the movement of goods produced in distant locations
(often overseas) to their eventual point of consumption. This has created a fundamental spatial
disconnect between production, manufacturing, and consumption within the city; where local
economies often have no relationship with the production or subsequent economic benefit of
the goods they consume. As these contemporary systems of industrial production are often reliant
on Just-In-Time operational models, the speed and turnover of consumption have become
the dominant metrics of economic success. Productive industrial entities and territory, once
ingrained in the inhabited city fabric have gradually disappeared; leaving behind smooth, frictionless
surfaces of retail, logistics, and service, lacking a social viscosity, and consideration for the
public dimension of the city.
This thesis argues that Walmart, the archetypal big-box retailer, forms today’s dominant
industrial actor; significantly influencing the socio-economic, cultural, and physical configurations
of the American city. First, Walmart’s current distributed operational model is analyzed to
better understand and contextualize the connections between industry, production, consumption,
and urbanization. The next sections speculate upon the long-term social, economic, and
environmental sustainability of Walmart’s strategy; while examining the links between social
interaction, idea exchange, innovation, and physical proximity within the city. As a result of
many factors, including rising energy costs, this project predicts, and then explores a future where
distributed operational models are no longer viable. This thesis predicts a subsequent transformation
in manufacturing and consumption within the United States; linked to a resurgence in
domestic production, by emerging micro-production formats. This scenario, coupled with a
stated goal or mandate by Walmart to reduce overall supply chain energy expenditure, presents a unique opportunity for a speculative, opportunistic architecture within the American city.
Walmart 2.0 radically reconsiders Walmart’s existing operational model and related built
infrastructures, in the creation of a new industrial system that seeks to re-inject systems of consumption,
production, and exchange, back into the urban fabric. Walmart becomes an ‘open’,
‘for-hire’ underlying facilitator for the production, consumption, and movement of goods
between local nodes of economy, using their existing expertise in logistical, territorial, and data
management. As such, Walmart 2.0 acts as a physical and systemic platform for self-organising
production and market exchanges that are facilitated, but not controlled by Walmart. A
redevelopment of the generic Walmart Supercenter creates a system of participation; where local
communities of Walmart 2.0 users both create and consume the content flowing through the
Walmart 2.0 system; allowing these communities to engage in the economies of their own locale.
Broadly, Walmart 2.0 seeks to provoke the emergence of an urban fabric with an engrained
sensitivity towards human interactions in relation to systems of production, consumption and
exchange. Further, the project seeks to illustrate a method of operation, through which architects
may gain an increased agency within the powerful industrial systems shaping the underlying
structure of the contemporary city; a method based on the analysis of existing industrial actors,
and speculating upon their future transformations with a heightened social consideration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:WATERLOO/oai:uwspace.uwaterloo.ca:10012/6952 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Huff, Ian S. |
| Source Sets | University of Waterloo Electronic Theses Repository |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
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