[Alberta's Child]

Actually, the urban operating model doesn't work in a modern manufacturing economy, period. Henry Ford probably caused more disruption in urban life than anyone else in U.S. history. The old urban model no longer worked once manufacturing moved to an assembly-line process that replaced the multi-story factories all over U.S. cities with massive single-story buildings that covered huge tracts of land.

Here's a photo of a major manufacturing facility in the U.S. today. It's a Honda plant in Ohio. There isn't a major city anywhere in the U.S. that could accommodate a building like this:

[Kozak]

Actually you could put a dozen of those in now empty parts of Detroit.
In anyone were crazy enough to do it.

[kearnyirish2]

Newark’s south ward could fit that easily (but you have to take your allocation of gibsmedats akin to the Quartering Act)...