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I grew up in the Cincinnati area granted it was the suburbs but I never knew it was a Rust Belt City. Everyone in my town was a Dr, Lawyer, CEO or some other type of professional. Cincinnati is not as poor as people think it is even the city. Pittsburgh is my answer thou even thou it is not considered Rust Belt any longer as well.
I grew up in the Cincinnati area granted it was the suburbs but I never knew it was a Rust Belt City. Everyone in my town was a Dr, Lawyer, CEO or some other type of professional. Cincinnati is not as poor as people think it is even the city. Pittsburgh is my answer thou even thou it is not considered Rust Belt any longer as well.
Every "Rust Belt" area has towns like that and even nice city neighborhoods. So, that isn't unique or unusual to find similar places in such metro areas.
If anything, most Rust Belt cities are small in terms of land size to where if they were in the South or a state where annexation is possible, many first and even second ring suburbs would be outer city neighborhoods for those cities. Many of these Rust Belt cities except for Detroit are in the 35-70 square miles range, which is quite small given the city population of these cities. This is even the case with their population loss over the years.
Last edited by ckhthankgod; 09-18-2016 at 03:59 PM..
That is completely untrue, Chicago is still very much a rust belt city. It has lost a million people from its population since its peak, has vast abandoned and decaying neighborhoods, and lots of legacy industry left over. Its differentiation from the rest of the Rust Belt is that it began its comeback much earlier-in the 80s and 90s.
Nah. Chicago lost roughly 27% of its peak population, but a lot of those people moved to the Chicago suburbs. The Chicago MSA has never lost population, and Cook County, IL is about 300k off of its peak population. Yes, Chicago has seen substantial population decline, but its county has had very little. Hardly rust belt.
Nah. Chicago lost roughly 27% of its peak population, but a lot of those people moved to the Chicago suburbs. The Chicago MSA has never lost population, and Cook County, IL is about 300k off of its peak population. Yes, Chicago has seen substantial population decline, but its county has had very little. Hardly rust belt.
I do wonder how much of that is because Chicago developed a reasonably large Latino population pretty early on. It does seem in general that while there is white flight from Hispanic neighborhoods, they not only don't tend to have population declines. Few houses become abandoned and need to be knocked down, and due to large multi-generational families the number of people per household may even rise. It's certainly the case that a fair amount of cities with basically nothing else going for them (I'm looking at you Stockton) have managed to keep growing robustly solely due to their Latino and Asian populations.
Nah. Chicago lost roughly 27% of its peak population, but a lot of those people moved to the Chicago suburbs. The Chicago MSA has never lost population, and Cook County, IL is about 300k off of its peak population. Yes, Chicago has seen substantial population decline, but its county has had very little. Hardly rust belt.
The health of the suburbs means nothing to whether it's a rust belt city. St. Louis has never declined in metropolitan population either, but you'd be hard-pressed to say it's not a rust belt city.
The health of the suburbs means nothing to whether it's a rust belt city. St. Louis has never declined in metropolitan population either, but you'd be hard-pressed to say it's not a rust belt city.
St. Louis also lost 60% of its peak population. It went from 4th largest city to 60th. Chicago fell from 2nd to 3rd. Big difference.
Was Cincinnati ever a large manufacturing center? People keep claiming its Rust Belt but I've never heard of any steel mills in the area or other kinds of manufacturing. I'm not saying it's not a Rust Belt City...it certainly is a Midwest city, but is it a Rust Belt city to the degree of St. Louis, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh? I find that hard to believe.
Anyway, as far as the list goes, even with St. Louis on there, Pittsburgh has by far the brightest future. Downtown is booming and the city has managed to make the smoothest transition from a manufacturing city to a financial/banking city. It is doing the most well of all the cities on the list and to my knowledge is gaining in population. Cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and St. Louis continue to lose population.
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