Forum on the Urban Environment // AGAINST URBAN INNOCENCE

Fordism and the City: How an Industry Shaped Urbanization in America

In the early twentieth century, the Ford Motor Company built an industrial empire with massive factory complexes and associated infrastructures. Henry Ford’s 1915 plan to decentralize industrial manufacturing relied on moving key technical processes closer to sites of resource extraction while distributing elements of production. Under the rubric of “the industrial city,” Fordism sought to replace conventional urbanism, reconfiguring factory production and then making its practices visible and intelligible to a consuming public through an industrial aesthetic. In doing so, Cephas shows, Fordism functioned as a normalizing force that helped to usher in the new industrial society.

The Fall 2026 Forum is supported by the School of Architecture; Center for Collaborative History; Humanities Council; High Meadows Environmental Institute; Program in Latin American Studies; Department of Sociology; and the Lewis Center for the Arts.