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Probably the true rust belt cities match this the best, they just stopped growing (at the high rates) and didn't replace key industries
Detroit
St Louis
Cleveland
Buffalo
jump to mind
Other places like say a Philly has lost its top tier but didn't fall as hard and moved to different industries moreso than the others
Pittsburgh and Baltimore are two others with a similar dynamic
another wild card is NOLA which just sort of stopped being a largest city and maybe with the Mississippi Midwest industrial slide (or none continuous growth) had an impact from that
Not sure on Cinci
but Detroit, St Louis and Cleveland were all among the ten largest at one point, think NOLA was as well going further back
for better or worse sans Chicago the coastal cities weathered the storm a little better
I think what saves New Orleans is the 1950-2020 if it was 1890-2020 it’s be NOLA in a landslide.
A number of the cities on that list I would consider "second tier" or "third tier" in terms of national influence, but were clearly influential in specialized areas and have lost much of their luster with the decline of the companies that made them noteworthy.
Perhaps chief among these is Rochester, N.Y., birthplace of both Eastman Kodak Company and Haloid (now Xerox) Corporation and still home to the former. Both companies were caught flat-footed by major changes that shook their industries to the core and have never completely recovered. Nor has the city that nurtured them.
To me it depends. If the OP is going on city proper alone then yes Detroit. If the OP is factoring the size of the metro in the cities influence then I think people are too heavily weighting the "branding" of Detroit proper in their voting.
My top 3:
Cleveland
Pittsburgh
Buffalo
Detroit was the 5th largest metropolitan area in 1950, it is currently ranked 13th. Detroit's metro has cycled up and down a bit from it's peak in 2000, but it is currently stable and gaining. Some of it's counterpart metro's have continually declined in population since 1970. In 1950 St Louis, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh were the 8th, 9th, and 10th largest metropolitan areas in the country. Cleveland's metro is no longer in the top 30 largest metro's, Pittsburgh is currently ranked 26th and is has not yet started to gain residents back. Buffalo anchored the 14th largest metro area in 1950, it's currently ranked 49th. There are more examples like this. From a numbers standpoint I don't think its intellectually honest to say Detroit has lost more influence than these other cities.
Buffalo, STL, CLE.. Basically every city in OH, PA, Upstate NY, MI, and then Milwaukee. I wasn't alive back then, so I don't really know how important or what kind of mainstream relevance they had, but I do know one thing; back then they had a lot more people! I don't know if that translates to "better", just different. I know a lot of cities lost the steel mills and that was big business, but if losing one major industry causes multiple cities to take such drastic declines, then I guess it's like putting all your eggs in one basket.
At least in Buffalo, it was much more than one industry affected. Buffalo once had a large air and aerospace industry, which moved south and west. It's auto industry was greatly reduced through the 1990s. Chemical and refineries closed. Of course it lost its steel, once having the 2nd largest plant in the world, all gone. The St. Lawrence Seaway killed its shipping industry, and also greatly diminished its importance as a railroad transfer hub, its grain and flour milling, and bulk raw materials transfer. Banking grew and then fell after the S&L debacle.
That said, each city also lost much of what defined them. Detroit lost Motown to LA in the 60s, that alone had to hurt.
I wanted to answer with several, but am only limited to one choice. Can this thread be scrapped so that it can be reborn with a survey that allows multiple answers?
I think for this poll they should implement a windowing function that allows large numbers of entries to be selected at once. And they should also have an entry like____
I've thought about this quite a bit, after someone on here brought it to my attention... Just because many cities had peak populations in the 1950 census, does not mean that they were more desirable back then. If population density is the end all for you, then OK, but I imagine most cities with a lot of pollution...
Like you I wasn't [close to being] alive in 1950, but my paternal grandfather was a foreman at Bethlehem Steel in Lackawanna, NY (just outside of Buffalo), and there are stories told on my dad's side of the family not just about the undesirable conditions of the plant itself, but also how soot and other industrial byproducts would be found at the family home a mile or so away. I'm not sure when benzene became known to be a carcinogen, but I'm going to guess it was an issue back then, regardless of public (or expert) awareness. Wouldn't have wanted to live downwind from Bethlehem or Republic Steel, the latter of which was located in Buffalo city limits.
I was going to choose a bunch, because there are a lot of rust belt cities that meet that definition/criteria.
Buffalo, STL, CLE.. Basically every city in OH, PA, Upstate NY, MI, and then Milwaukee. I wasn't alive back then, so I don't really know how important or what kind of mainstream relevance they had, but I do know one thing; back then they had a lot more people! I don't know if that translates to "better", just different. I know a lot of cities lost the steel mills and that was big business, but if losing one major industry causes multiple cities to take such drastic declines, then I guess it's like putting all your eggs in one basket.
I've thought about this quite a bit, after someone on here brought it to my attention... Just because many cities had peak populations in the 1950 census, does not mean that they were more desirable back then. If population density is the end all for you, then OK, but I imagine most cities with a lot of pollution, crime, terrible race relations, and I couldn't imagine being gay in the 1950's. So, while some cities peaked in population in 1950, I feel like most are better cities today.
Yeah, I screwed up there and hit the publish button before I could allow for multiple options. LOL Sorry about that.
I agree that a lot of cities in the rust belt take the crown...
I wanted to answer with several, but am only limited to one choice. Can this thread be scrapped so that it can be reborn with a survey that allows multiple answers?
Yeah, apologies. It was my intent to select "multiple options" but made a mistake by only allowing "one choice."
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