Planning sustainable urban-industrial configurations: relations among industrial complexes and the centralities of a regional continuum

ABSTRACT Production models’ flexibilization in capitalist economies continues to transform industrial activities’ spatial organization in a regional continuum. Placed in planned complexes located on cities’ fringes, firms often stand inaccessible from regional circulation routes, which hinder activities’ long-term economic sustainability. Further changes are impending, as forthcoming Smart Manufacturing logistics require efficient linkages between local and regional transportation models. Such issues compel urban planners, economists and policymakers to re-evaluate industrial territories’ imprint on metropolitan dynamics and enact proper strategies towards the industry. In this paper, the role of road-circulation network centralities on industrial complexes’ placement in a regional continuum is analysed, refining the existent methods to assess industry spatial configuration and agglomeration logics. Empirical cases comprise five Brazilian industrial complexes in Porto Alegre’s Metropolitan Region. Hypothesis is that road-circulation network centralities’ hierarchies (closeness and betweenness) have positive correlations to industrial placement patterns at regional and inner-complex scale, informing regional contiguity dynamics amid discontinuous industrial spaces.