What cities are the Rust Belt and what is its capital? (best, better)
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What cities are the Rust Belt and what is its capital?
I suppose thread criteria could be things like:
- Economic factors
- Population gain and/or loss
- Geographical location
- History
- Condition of inner city neighborhoods and the like
Finally, how have these cities changed for the better since then?
Major cities only (see the poll to see the options being discussed). I'm leaving out the smaller satellite cities like Flint, Gary, Camden and places like that for two reasons: 1) they're obvious answers; 2) they're really small cities.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 09-08-2019 at 11:42 PM..
Looking at your list of cities, I would note that they cover the general area of the northeast quadrant of the US. The regions you have included are the Middle Atlantic and Great Lakes region (which I consider to be the actual Midwest). You didn't include New England, but obviously it would fit with the list of cities you did include. Boston became Rust Belt before there even was a Rust Belt. The textile mills of New England were disappearing in what was a rusting regions in the first half of the 20th century. It's almost like the major, major city of Boston took a half century snooze to wake up again as the major, major city of Boston. The city that best matches Boston and its fist half 20th century decline is St. Louis; sadly unlike Boston, St. Louis was never able to wake up.
Your definition was no better or no worse than anyone else's is. "Rust Belt" is far more concept than place. In that regard, it is a lot like Hollywood which far more refers to the motion picture industry and culture of Los Angeles than to an actual LA neighborhood, Hollywood, which would be well down the list of parts of the city that feel "Hollywood", have Hollywood's glamour, quantities that were/are far more a part of LA's westside than its east (it was an established "fact" who were headed towards two equal metropolises, NY and LA, albeit with the two going in opposite direction. When we were all California dreaming, New York was the source of our nightmares.)
The regions you identified were the true center of the US from the end of the Civil War to the emergence of the Sun Belt. Every major league baseball team was in the northwest quadrant of the nation at a time the biggest and virtually only real major league sport existed (even in the early 60's the NFL was an afterthought) until 1958 when San Francisco and Los Angeles were invited in to the fold. The upshot: you can't be part of the Rust Belt unless you were always in the region of cities that were "major league" (lower case).
So I'd give the (dubious) honor of the Capital of the Rust Belt to its largest and most stand out city: New York. New York went into decline, deep decline during the Rust Belt era (the very time another city, Los Angeles, our second largest, was going in the opposite direction. New York's shipping industry, its famed port was going down the tubes, passed by to places which could use containers to ship the goods. The garment industry declined to virtual non-existence and the jobs spread elsewhere...the Sun Belt, Mexico, the Far East.
It is uncanny how the fortunes of the intertwined nation (the US) and its premiere city (New York) paralleled each other through American history. The US and New York came of age in the earliest decades of the 20th century, their rises running side by side. And the New York of the 1970s was seeing the shattering of its once mighty industries that had dominated the war years and post-war years of WWII, a time when only the US stood in industrial strength, its economy and industries fueled by the war effort and reaching their true glory when Europe and the Far East lay in ruins and the US was on the top of the world.
No city deserves this capital title more so than New York
I don't really consider Chicago and Philadelphia true rust belt cities because they anchor very large and rather economically diverse regions, the biggest reason why they were able to escape the fate of other true rust belt cities.
I also thought some cities in Connecticut were a part of the rust belt?
I don't really consider Chicago and Philadelphia true rust belt cities because they anchor very large and rather economically diverse regions, the biggest reason why they were able to escape the fate of other true rust belt cities.
I also thought some cities in Connecticut were a part of the rust belt?
I agree with this assessment. Neither Philly nor Chicago are rustbelt cities, but the rustbelt DOES include cities in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
I agree with this assessment. Neither Philly nor Chicago are rustbelt cities, but the rustbelt DOES include cities in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
I disagree. The economic factors leading to the decline of Hartford or NewBedford are totally different than those that lead to the Downfall of Youngstown, Toledo, Wheeling, Buffalo and Pittsburgh. The latter group happened at the same time for the exact same reasons. Totally different than Hartford that 1) remained very wealthy and 2) suffered from automation of white collar rust assessment jobs in the insurance industry not outsourcing of industrial jobs. New Bedford took a hit when the industry that sustained it (Whaling) pretty much died all together.
Chicago lies within the rust belt, but isn't rust belt. It's become an elite white collar city, and has been that way for quite some time. People aren't fleeing because of no jobs, they're fleeing because of high COL. Even on a historical level, Chicago is too big and prominent on the national and global stage to be thrown in the same box as Rochester, Detroit, and Gary. It's by no means a "one trick pony" town like Detroit was with the auto industry and many cities in Pennsylvania were reliant on Coal.
Good grief, man....Chicago is part and parcel of the Rust Belt.
It’s located in the rust belt, but it’s not a rust belt city itself. Similar to Philly & Baltimore, their economies were already diversified before the manufacturing industry went belly up, so they came out economically unscathed (relatively)
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