Combining theories of calculation and property relations and using an array of archival sources, this book focuses on the building and decommissioning of state-owned defense factories in World War IIûera Chicago. Robert Lewis's rich trove of materialdrawn from research on more than six hundred federally funded wartime industrial sites in metropolitan Chicagosupports three major conclusions. First, the relationship of the key institutions of the military-industrial complex was refashioned by their calculative actions on industrial property. The imperatives of war forced the federal state and the military to become involved in industrial matters in an entirely new manner. Second, federal and military investment in defense factories had an enormous effect on the industrial geography of metropolitan Chicago. The channeling of huge lumps of industrial capital into sprawling plants on the urban fringe had a decisive impact on the metropolitan geographies of manufacturing. Third, the success of industrial mobilization was made possible through the multi-scale relations of national and locational interaction. National policy could only be realized by the placing of these relations at the local level.

Acknowledgments -- List of abbreviations -- Introduction -- Calculation and industrial property -- Industrial sites and wartime mobilization -- Mobilizing chicago's wartime industrial property -- Chicago's wartime industrial sites -- War factories and industrial engineering -- The disposal regime : factories and national security -- Disposing of Chicago's war factories -- The site politics of defense factory disposal -- Property, calculation, and industrial space -- Appendix wartime factory expansion -- Notes -- Manuscript sources -- Index.