The Vertical Urban Factory Concept and Sustainable Transport – Prototypes for European Cities

The Vertical Urban Factory concept reclaims production in multi-story buildings as part of the cityscape. Today, factories are mostly located in monofunctional industrial areas outside of cities due to high land prices and restrictions on motorized individual transport. However, production must be taken into account as a necessary element of lively and mixed urban structures. New urban development concepts are therefore in demand for efficient and space-saving use of commercial and industrial space. We analyzed how multi-story production can be reintegrated into European cities and developed five prototypes considering urban structure and logistics concepts. The prototypes show that multi-story construction is indeed a realizable alternative for limited space resources. While integrating individual production facilities in densely built-up areas fulfils the current transport policy objectives best, the greatest potential of vertical production is located in mixed commercial areas. The vertical urban factory concept promotes sustainability goals on many levels and we therefore recommend it to cities. In this paper, we focus on the transportation aspects and present three of the five prototypes.