Industrienahen

Industrienahen is a concept in urban planning and regional economics referring to the proximity of a location to industrial activity. In German-language planning literature it is used to describe the degree to which firms, suppliers, and infrastructure are located near one another to facilitate manufacturing and logistics. The term is often translated as industrial proximity or industrial-near positioning and may be applied at city, district, or site scales.

Indicators used to assess industrienahen include distance to major industrial zones, the density of manufacturing firms within a given radius, the share of regional employment in manufacturing, and access to transport corridors (roads, rail, ports) as well as logistics nodes such as warehouses and distribution centers.

Industrial proximity can yield benefits such as lower transportation costs, shorter supplier-customer lead times, stronger supply-chain integration, and knowledge spillovers from nearby firms. It can also enhance resilience to disruptions through diversified but nearby capabilities. On the downside, high industrienahen can coincide with land-use conflicts, environmental pressures, noise and emissions, and congestion. It may also reinforce regional inequalities if industrial activity concentrates in specific areas.

In policy and planning practice, strategies to foster industrienahen include developing industrial parks and business clusters, improving multimodal infrastructure, streamlining permitting near industrial districts, and coordinating land-use planning with economic development goals. The concept is often used alongside related ideas such as industrial clustering and agglomeration economies to explain performance differences between regions.

Overall, industrienahen is a flexible, context-dependent concept without a single universal metric, and its operationalization varies across languages and studies.