Welcome to the
Center for Urban Industry.

Recent Events

June 7, 2024

Nina Rappaport spoke on a panel discussion at the New Jersey Planning and Redevelopment Conference sponsored by New Jersey Futures and the New Jersey Chapter of the APA. The session was organized by the New Jersey Redevelopment Authority and moderated by Leslie Anderson, President & CEO of NJRA on the topic:  “Redefining Urban Redevelopment: Shaping Sustainable and Resilient Cities”.  The other panelists included: Baye Adofo-Wilson, Orlando Cruz, and Evan Weiss.

September 17, 2024

Nina Rappaport presented at the Governor's Conference on Housing and Economic Development in Atlantic City on with the New Jersey Redevelopment Authority, local real estate developer, Patrick Terborg, planner Gerard Haizel, and legal advisor, Calvin Souder to discuss, "Redefining Urban Redevelopment: Shaping Sustainable and Resilient Cities." She discussed the Center for Urban Industry's Trenton-based work with the John S. Watson Institute for Urban Policy and Research to 120 attendees. The panel received a great response to the issues of local economic revitalization, community engagement, and new ways to mix developments for sustainable economic growth and social equity.

The challenges of urban industry

The development of industrial infrastructure in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries influenced the physical makeup of New Jersey’s urban communities, America’s economy, and people’s prosperity. With the decline of traditional industries and the offshoring of manufacturing, historic industrial cities must reimagine ways to reorient their physical infrastructure to present and future industries that provide the high-paying, accessible jobs that fueled their economies in previous eras and be sustainable for today’s environment.

Modern economic and environmental realities require hard and soft infrastructure to support the new economies, including small-scale and nano-manufacturing facilities for industries such as metal fabrication, medical instruments, food, locally made products, and biotechnology. These industries are smaller, cleaner, greener, and quieter and thus can be integrated with the city again. Additionally, leaders in New Jersey communities must create affordable housing, commercial space, and community amenities to support communities and jobs. 


How do we support urban industry?

The Center for Urban Industry (CUI) is a partnership of Vertical Urban Factory and two Kean University entities, including the Kean US EDA University Center at the John S. Watson Institute for Urban Policy and Research and the School for Public Architecture (SPA). The mission of CUI is to provide research, design, reuse, and redevelopment assistance to public entities and  local private property owners to re-develop industrial infrastructure into multi-purpose assets that meet the community’s needs. CUI seeks to be the eminent entity in New Jersey for supporting communities seeking to re-develop their industrial infrastructure and its eco-system to suit uses that raise a community’s economic, social, and environmental standards in a just and equitable way and encourage multi-purpose community assets. 

CUI is working with historic former industrial New Jersey cities to recommend changes to industrial redevelopment area plans and facilitate the re-development of critical industrial properties. We focus on existing industrial sites as adaptive reuse projects, saving the embodied energy of their materials to create multi-purpose centers for economic, social, and environmental justice that present a local opportunity to transform urban communities from the ground up.

Women sewing mattress panels at Shifman Mattress, Newark, N.J., 1950s, courtesy Shifman Mattress

Interior of Roebling Wire Trenton, N.J., courtesy Historic American Building Survey, National Park Service, 1970s

Wiss & Son, factory worker, Newark, N.J. 1960s courtesy Newark Public Library

Our Process

We seek to: 

• Bring new equitable property developers and entrepreneurs to New Jersey’s former and current industrial cities.

• Spark interest in these sites and the industrial potential of the cities to create new entrepreneurial eco-systems.

• Gather feedback and ideas from residents about the potential for regeneration and reuse.

• Find innovative ways to provide jobs for city residents.

• Create community equity through adaptive reuse and reinvestment

Repurposed Roebling building that is now Trenton Circus Squad and Freedom Skate, 2022

“Manufacturing matters to the United States because it provides high-wage jobs, commercial innovation (the nation’s largest source), a key to trade deficit reduction, and a disproportionately large contribution to environmental sustainability. The manufacturing industries and firms that make the greatest contribution to these four objectives are also those that have the greatest potential to maintain or expand employment in the United States.”

— Brookings Institute Metropolitan Policy Program, “Why Does Manufacturing Matter? Which Manufacturing Matters?” Susan Helper, Timothy Krueger, and Howard Wial, February 22, 2012

About Us

The Center includes a team of students and professionals, including Nina Rappaport of Vertical Urban Factory and the School of Public Architecture of Kean University, is a co-founder with Alex Rivera, Director of the Center for Economic and Workforce Development of the Watson Institute of Kean University.

Current student researcher/urban planners include: Alexander Lange, School of Public Architecture (BA ’24), Kean University Academic Specialist,  Elise Dusenshine, School of Public Architecture (MA ’22), Kean University and graphic designers Marta Tonelli and Sarah Gephart.