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Making Downtown LA’s Jewelry
District More Sustainable
The jewelry industry has a long history in Los Angeles,
and forms an important component of the city’s
economic base and provides opportunities for workers
and entrepreneurs. Moreover, the Jewelry District, where
a mosaic of multi-ethnic and multicultural manufacturers,
wholesalers, and retailers cluster in the historic core
of downtown Los Angeles and work together in peace and
harmony, is an essential thread in the city’s
richly woven urban fabric. Yet the Jewelry District
faces an uncertain future due to changing regulatory,
technological, and market contexts.
Now, a team of graduate students led by Professor
Najmedin Meshkati, has released a new study of the jewelry
sector, Sustainability
of the Los Angeles Jewelry District: An Interdisciplinary
Analysis of Technical, Social, Economic, Safety, Health
and Environmental Issues, focusing on the current
situation and future prospects of the Jewelry District.
The team members conducted their work as part of a graduate
course, ‘Methods for Assessment and Protection
of Environmental Quality’ (CE 564), offered by
the USC Department of Civil/Environmental Engineering
of the Viterbi School of Engineering as part of the
Center’s multidisciplinary certificate program
on urban sustainability. The students hailed from fields
ranging from Engineering, Physical Sciences, Anthropology,
Economics, and Urban Planning.
The report underscores the strength of the local jewelry
industry and offers a comprehensive assessment of its
chances for survival in downtown Los Angeles. A major
characteristic of the industry is its geographic clustering:
firms involved in jewelry, from raw materials assembly
to manufacturing to retail sales, are functionally linked
and need to be located in close proximity. This tendency
to agglomerate is promoted by fact that many transactions
in the sector are based on relations of mutual trust,
often formed on the basis of ethnic networks.
The study predicts that manufacturing operations are
apt to become consolidated into 15-20 buildings whose
owners will have retrofitted the structures to bring
them into compliance with regulatory standards. Costs
will be passed through to tenants, triggering some turnover
before the market adjusts. Further, the study suggests
that regulations related to environmental pollutants
and worker health and safety may become more stringent
over time in response to greater scientific knowledge
about human health risk, greater demand for downtown
living, and concerns about liability and loss among
owners, local government and insurers. Also, changes
in the downtown real estate market, in particular rising
demand for housing in converted offices and manufacturing
structures, may alter the economics of the jewelry sector,
pricing it out of downtown. Lastly, while much of local
jewelry manufacturing is destined for local markets,
the industry operates in a global economic environment
and is increasingly competitive, necessitating additional
cost efficiencies if the sector is to remain and flourish
in southern California.
The report reveals that the realities of today’s
jewelry industry suggest the need for a new Jewelry
District prototype – one that not only permits
the agglomeration of jewelry-related firms, but is also
developed in accordance with emerging principles of
eco-industrial development and sustainability. The life
cycle manufacturing of jewelry products should be used
as a foundation for the development of a ‘Green
Diamond’ district in downtown Los Angeles –
in either retrofitted structures or new facilities built
according to contemporary sustainable building standards.
For a copy of the report, please click
here.
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