Which Rust Belt city in the Midwest has made the strongest recovery?

[Serious Conversation]

Cincinnati is worth seeing for the riverfront amid sports along there.

[btownboss4]

Looking at the new census numbers where
1) Erie County (Buffalo) was revised down to 919,000 making it essentially flat since 2010
2) Allegheny County lost 5,000 people but I’d only down about 8,000 since 2010
3) Wayne County (Detroit) lots about 1800 from 2017 and down 67,000 from 2010
4) Cuyohoga County lost ~4,600 and is down 36,000 from 2010

These are core counties (and in Buffalo’s case like 80% of the metro area) are near or over 1,000,000 so they all have significant suburban populations and their populations aren’t recovering. The latter two have core counties underperforming the metro population change rate.

St Louis City + County lost 4800 from 2017 to 2018 dropping to 1,298,000. Which underperformed the overall ~0% 2010 to 2018 change.

Hamilton County ( Cincinnati) is the only City people really call rustbelt to see any sort of significant growth. +2,000 year over year and +14,000 from 2010.

[mjlo]

I do think the progress in the city of Detroit is starting to translate into overall recovery. Below are graphs showing the loss/gains for Wayne, Cuyahoga, and Allegheny counties every year since 2010. Wayne's losses are the only ones that are consistently trending toward zero. To be clear they are still losses but the amount has steadily diminished every years since 2012. I believe this years estimates represent the smallest losses since the early 1960's which IMO is huge.

I've always thought the situation in Detroit was more nuanced than the other cities, especially since it's metro has only lost about 100k residents total from its peak. I think it's problems are far more political, and driven by fractured regionalism, than economics. The billions of investment going into it's core seems to be translating dividends. I've always thought Wayne counties losses are inextricably tied to Detroits. If Detroit stops losing people, so will Wayne County. It appears to be trending that way.

To be fair I still think the city of Detroit is the furthest behind in its recovery next to the cities it's being compared to. Once it hits a certain threshold I think it's recovery will move quicker.

[NDFan]

1. St. Louis (really good growth now; has a lot of blight, which reduces ability of local government to help improve the city)
2. Cincinnati (decline was well controlled and riverfront is really nice; has pretty neat architecture and unusual feeling city for the Rust Belt-not sure it really should be considered Rust Belt though)
3. Milwaukee (has some teething pains and severe income inequality, but has really nice bones, and great location on the lake)
4. Cleveland (things are slowly headed in the right direction and downtown has some neat spots, but still has a good ways to go)
5. Detroit (is coming up from bottom and has some nice spots, but it's by far the largest city of the bunch and it has the most blight and other issues)