Building Renovation of Former Industrial Land

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Building Renovation of Former Industrial Land
The exodus of industry from urban city areas and suburbanization create swaths of empty syntax in city urban texture. Moreover, minimum wage, part-time labor jobs will rise in the future due to the loss of full-time jobs (Ghirardo, 1996, p.208). To accompany this increasing demand for labor in downtown, these former industrial lands need to be renovated for reuse. While most corporations moved out to suburban or semi-rural areas, often called office parks, cities have begun to entice corporations back into the city center through the use of tax and financing incentives. (Ghirardo, 1996, p.208) With incentives comes upgrading old central business and industrial areas, and that leads to gentrification. As Ghirardo pointed out, "Through language as well as design, diverse, often chaotic cities which included the working poor are dismissed, and instead what amount to highly segregated spaces are celebrated as proper urban settings" (Ghirardo, 1996, p.211). This short sighted planning can severely hinder future city development and incur incompatible social issues due to segregation. Both for designers and officials, it is beneficial to create a diversified community that embraces different social and economic statuses in which people can get equal opportunities and get more access to improve their lives. Industrial site renovation to some degree have proved its ability in improving the quality of life in deteriorated neighborhood or abandoned industrial areas (Tagliaferri, 2006, p. 248).
Paul Byard stated (1998), "anything built inevitably says something about what is doing, about those involved in it and about their view of the world "(p. 11). This means each building tells something about its location, history, and its occupants no matter if the aesthetic aspect of the building is recognized or not. Because once we step in a space, we will go through a sequence of spaces within time (Ching, 1996, p. 228) and generate our own feelings through this interaction. It is worth it protecting historical buildings because of their expressions of human conditions at their times, their richness and satisfying environments for living, and their expressions of local identities which help the society and individuals to accommodate their own lives (Byard, 1998, p. 11).
It is not enough to only understand the importance of historical buildings, but also need to acknowledge how to reuse them at present time to keep them alive. The confliction between the old buildings and their new function requirements creates the ingenious opportunities for designers.

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