Fast Money, 'Portfolio Urbanism', and the Remaking of an Industrial District into a Global Asset

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, many U.S. central cities have seen a boom in commercial property development led by innovative adaptive reuse and "creative office" projects. These have promoted new office submarkets in novel areas such as industrial districts or corridors adjacent to traditional commercial centers, including South Lake Union in Seattle, Chelsea Market in New York, Seaport District in Boston, and Fulton Market in Chicago. This boom has been conventionally interpreted as the outcome of several trends, including the growing importance of the millennial workforce in the labor market as well as new economic sectors such as technology, advertising, and media. The rapid pace of development has caused planners in cities such as Chicago to re-evaluate old industrial districts, focusing on facilitating new forms of redevelopment by reshaping existing local land use regulations and providing a new spatial vision for the area. In this dissertation, I argue that conventional interpretations of the rise of these creative office districts miss the mechanisms and dynamics underlying the transformation of old industrial spaces at the current moment. Through a case study of the post-2008 transformation of Chicago's Fulton Market and West Loop districts, I examine the unique characteristics of recent physical and economic changes and link them to a process of financialization of industrial space.