The rusted steel that binds: how craft producers form neolocal economies in Pittsburgh, PA

Abstract

ABSTRACT As many post-industrial cities shift to service and information, manufacturing legacies – material and symbolic – persist in diverse ways. The “Steel City” of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania exemplifies both deindustrial transition to “eds and meds” and vibrant small-scale production. Cultural geographers interpret place-based craft production as neolocalism, while economic geographers emphasize ways craft can be embedded in evolving economic regions. To understand how local craft production is situated within economic and urban change, this project asks: How do craft producers work – individually and collaboratively – to produce neolocal economies in formerly industrial Pittsburgh? Semi-structured interviews, workshop tours, and a mapping exercise with twenty craft producers and suppliers explored the nature of small-scale production, its embeddedness in place, and professional and supplier networking. The research reveals ways craft workers, suppliers, and organizations in Pittsburgh self-consciously adapt social and material legacies of manufacturing, cluster in particular neighborhoods, and network to build local supply chains and communities. While producers are unevenly engaged in industrial legacies and economies and bound up in wider processes like gentrification, craft labor and collaboration can help maintain traditions of production in places once defined by them.