INDUSTRIAL URBANISM BY TALI HATUKA & ERAN BEN-JOSEPH
LORDSTOWN |UNITED STATES
Photo courtesy GM Lordstown
PROTOTYPE : AUTONOMOUS
CITY PROFILE
Incorporated: 1975
Overall area: 59.9 km2
Population: 3,400
INDUSTRY PROFILE
Area: 13.2 km2
Program: Auto assembly
Urban form: Assembly plant, located along arterial road and rail network
Industrial typologies: Single factory (Lordstown Assembly Plant)
Largest employer: General Motors (6,500 employees)
Lordstown is a village in northeastern Ohio, located equidistant from Cleveland and Pittsburgh. The village is best known for Lordstown Assembly, a General Motors plant that started production in 1966. Most of the residents work at the plant. Despite the village’s small size, it supports more industrial jobs than any other municipality in the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Lordstown’s layout is dominated by the presence of the assembly plant and the adjacent rail yard. A majority of the land area is sparsely populated residential zones with only a small downtown commercial zone. Lordstown Assembly and the rail-lines occupy about one-quarter of the total land area. The city can be characterized as dependent on the Assembly Plant.
Located in the middle of an agricultural area, the GM Lordstown complex essentially encompasses all of the town’s industrial area. The plant is physically separated from the community though many of the plant's employees live in Lordstown and use its services and amenities.
Company housing exists across from the complex with roughly 200 single-family homes housing the plant’s employees. While multiple rail-lines connect the plant to the rest of the country, the automobile is the primary mode of transportation for employees living and commuting to the complex from other areas.
The Lordstown site exists as in physical isolation from the surrounding land uses, and is served by its own infrastructure. The site includes a large parking lot, connected to interstates 80 and 680. The highways cut through surrounding farmland, linking the site to the greater Youngstown region.