About this episode
The episode features an interview with Allentown's Mayor Matthew Tuerk discussing the city's strategy for reindustrialization and its role as a manufacturing hub.
The residents of Allentown are still sore about that Billy Joel song. While it's true the Pennsylvania city became synonymous with deindustrialization after the US steel industry began its decline in the 1970s, Allentown should be known for more: In the 1950s, for instance, some of the first mass-produced transistors were made in the city, which were the precursor of today's semiconductors. The city is also a unique logistics and e-commerce hub — it's a day's drive from nearly 40 percent of the US population. Mayor Matthew Tuerk, who has held office since 2022, has made reindustrialization a focus of his mayorship. In today's episode, recorded in Madrid at the Bloomberg CityLab conference, we speak to Mayor Tuerk about the city's grand strategy for building back and sustaining its manufacturing base, implementing industrial policy on a local level, how rezoning has changed in the last decade, the political puzzle of data centers, recruiting companies to come to Allentown, de-risking the American supply chain, and our favorite new category of industry — weight-gaining industries — which Allentown specializes in. Read more: New Brookfield Venture May Restart…
People in this episode
Guest: Matthew Tuerk
Topics covered
- manufacturing
- reindustrialization
- local industrial policy
- logistics
- e-commerce
- supply chain
Keywords
- Allentown
- manufacturing hub
- reindustrialization
- logistics
- supply chain
- industrial policy
- data centers
- weight-gaining industries
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Bloomberg, US steel industry
Products: transistors, semiconductors
Places: Allentown, Pennsylvania, Madrid, US
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