Industrial Energy Use and Interventions in Urban Form: Heavy Manufacturing versus New Service and Creative Industries

Now that it becomes obvious that disregarding the seriousness of climate change and the exhaustibility of fossil fuels would have severe and unpredictable impacts, improvement of the efficiency of urban energy consumption is of utmost importance. Hence, a rather diverse spectrum of policies to encourage this improvement has been put into practice. This paper focuses on the interrelations between interventions in urban form and improvements in energy efficiency of industries. These interventions, particularly spatial planning and urban design, are rare compared to other types of policies, in spite of their potentialities. This observation is illustrated by the case studies of two medium-size cities. Moreover, insofar as spatial planning aims to improve industrial energy efficiency, its implementation is limited to traditional and large-scale heavy industries at peripheral urban locations. Regarding new service and creative industries that tend to cluster in central city locations, both empirical evidence and policy practices are still missing.