At a time when City officials were considering rezoning the Garment District and removing all protections for fashion manufacturing, our Made in Midtown study demonstrated that the Garment District is a thriving research and development hub, and an integral part of NYC's economy and identity as a global fashion capital.

impact

Our study successfully shifted debates about the District to focus on its competitive advantages: its central location, transportation access, unique architecture, and light industrial cluster. 

Shortly after its release, the City withdrew its controversial rezoning proposal for the Garment District, which would have moved all fashion production into a single building in the District. The news was reported in the June 14, 2010 issue of Crain's New York: "Word of the city's move [to shelve a rezoning proposal] follows a study released this month by the Design Trust for Public Space. Instead of describing the garment center as a relic of a bygone industrial age, the new report bills it as a thriving and hugely productive research-and-development hub for high-end fashion."

background

For more than 100 years, the urban identity of a large swath of midtown and of course the Garment District derived from the fashion industry. Well into the 20th Century, the District manufactured over 90% of the garments sold in this country. That scale of mass production will never return, but the core network of factories, suppliers, designers, and skilled artisans that gave rise to American fashion in the 1970s has evolved into a fashion research and development hub. There is no doubt today that New York City is the fashion capital of the world. 

New York City government created the Special Garment Center District in 1987 to preserve manufacturing space, resulting in relatively low rents and a continued manufacturing presence in the District. However, enormous real estate pressure currently surrounds the Garment District. In adjacent neighborhoods, many new residential towers, hotels, and offices have been built. 

In 2007, the Bloomberg administration announced it would consider changing the zoning that protects garment manufacturing space in Midtown Manhattan's Garment District to encourage redevelopment. Following this announcement, local property owners, City officials, and fashion industry representatives met for two years in an attempt to reach a consensus on a new zoning proposal, but they were not able to agree. 

process

In 2009 the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) responded to our open RFP with a proposal to produce an open-ended, independent study of the Garment District and offer a vision for its future. The Design Trust's selection jury recognized that this project was about much more than fashion – it was about a mixed-use neighborhood, jobs, industry, and ultimately, whether creative production will have a home in a 21st century New York. 

To tell the whole story about how the neighborhood works and show the value it brings, we assembled an interdisciplinary team of project Fellows, including architects and planners, a filmmaker, journalist, and graphic designer, who completed the following in just six months: 

• Interviewed more than 70 fashion industry and neighborhood stakeholders
• Analyzed over two decades of city, state, and federal business data
• Produced seven short films and twenty-one written profiles of key industry stakeholders
• Created maps, diagrams, and illustrations highlighting recent economic trends for fashion-related businesses
• Produced diagrams, comic strips, and drawings to illustrate how clothes are made and the competitive advantages to making clothes locally
• Created a video and written essay on why the proximity of fashion-related firms in the Garment District supports fashion design and innovation
• Compared the Garment District's fashion ecology with London, Paris, Milan 

Due to an aggressive timetable for the City's decision, we published the project's findings as a multimedia website instead of a print publication. MadeinMidtown.net  showed why fashion design is inextricably linked to manufacturing, and how the cluster of designers, factories, and suppliers working in close proximity in the Garment District contribute to New York’s economy, identity, and sense of place.