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Milwaukee technically hasn't recovered all that much from its loss, but it also was among the Rust Belt cities that lost the least in terms of net population loss or parts of the city becoming urban prairies.
I wouldn't call a lot of these cities on here Rust Belt. From my experience the Rust Belt makes up Eastern Michigan, Northern and Appalachian Ohio, Northeast Kentucky, West Virginia minus the Eastern Panhandle, Western Pennsylvania, and the west half of Upstate New York.
The clinical definition of Rustbelt is any city that lost a significant amount of manufacturing jobs from the 1950-80s and had to go through economic transition. That includes places as far removed as New York and Boston. The common thought on this website tends to not include any city that has successfully rebranded itself away from decline as Rustbelt, regardless of this definition. We tend to only think of the cities that have been in a perpetual state of population decline since the 1950's as truly Rustbelt.
Most economic models do place cities like Madison and Columbus in that region/category due to losing manufacturing jobs. Though being state capitals and home to major research universities definitely allowed them to transition to modern economies decades sooner than their instate counterparts. I do think their inclusion dilutes the study when there are so many other cities that are much more "Rustbelt" in nature.
This looks like very common piece put out by a regional economic development arm. I tend to regard their information as more propaganda-esque, vs. unbiased facts. I agree that Fort Wayne has faired better than many of these cities, but I'd be curious to know where they are getting their numbers from. #2 in the midwest for growth? What kind of growth? The Fort Wayne region is outpaced in both population and economic growth by more than 2 cities in the Midwest since the great recession. I wonder what metric they are using in order to put that on their website.
Also Fort Wayne has been able to hide some of it's core struggles through aggressive annexation(like Kansas City). It appears artificially large on paper due to it's 110 sq mi city borders. One of the areas it under performs is educational attainment. Typically cities that annex large swaths of their suburban areas tend to have higher than average educational attainment. Fort Wayne has a 28.2% bachelors degree attainment rate which is pretty low. Grand Rapids by comparison has a bachelors degree rate nearly 10% higher at 37.7%, and it contains a much greater ration of inner city/impoverished neighborhoods. That tells me Fort Wayne's economy is still more dependent on lower skilled, manufacturing sector employment which is likely hurting it in a study like this.
What has kept Rochester afloat is that many of the people associated with the bigger companies of the past went on to create their own companies. So, the area went from having 3 big companies to a bunch of smaller companies.
Some may attribute the passing of Rochester by Buffalo in terms of GDP to the big state investment in the city of Buffalo in recent years.
Yes. More of Rochester feels much livelier than more of Buffalo. The rot in ROC is much more contained and concentrated, and the boom in Buffalo likewise. ROC was a creators' town in terms of business development, and still factors into its culture.
Fort Wayne is unique in that it is doing well in a largely blue collar way. It doesn’t have any major universities (except a small regional Purdue campus) so scores low on education metrics.
Milwaukee technically hasn't recovered all that much from its loss, but it also was among the Rust Belt cities that lost the least in terms of net population loss or parts of the city becoming urban prairies.
Milwaukee staved off the worst population decline in large part because it was the only Rust Belt city which successfully annexed a wide swathe of suburbia, expanding out to the county line to the Northwest of the city. This helped to mask some of the core decline. Though it is also true the amount of urban prairie is much more limited than you see elsewhere.
Grand Rapids was never fully a rust belt industrial city either. Most of its population growth has occurred in the last few decades.
That's debatable IMO. Rustbelt is as an economic indicator, population trends are a biproduct of that. Grand Rapids is absolutely an old factory town. It's full of turn of the century old industrial properties, and at one point was the furniture producing capital of the world. Automotive suppliers are still the largest manufacturing sector in it's economy, and it's one of the few large metro's that have more manufacturing jobs now than it did in 1960.
I think the difference is that Grand Rapids was never a big union city, and it was never dependent on one or two major employers. That diversification protected it's regional economy from the downturns experienced on the other side of MI. In 1980 Grand Rapids economy was overwhelmingly manufacturing dependent. Only in the last 30 years has it's economy shifted into the more educated bio-med/research/education/ and corporate diversity that it's becoming known for. Like Fort Wayne it's grown without benefit of major university or state government. Also don't forget that Grand Rapids suffered significant disinvestment like all Michigan cities did from the 50s-80s. It's likely that it's 25 sq mile core is still less populated than it was in 1960. It nearly doubled its size in annexations in the 60s which helped offset those losses. It was only in the 1980s and 90s that local billionaires started heavy investments to turn that around.
Milwaukee staved off the worst population decline in large part because it was the only Rust Belt city which successfully annexed a wide swathe of suburbia, expanding out to the county line to the Northwest of the city. This helped to mask some of the core decline. Though it is also true the amount of urban prairie is much more limited than you see elsewhere.
Actually Kansas City is the poster child for this. In 1950 it was 80sq mi, with 450k residents. In 2020 it's 320sq mi with 510K residents. Kansas City flies under the radar because it's population numbers show small growth over the last 70 years, but most people don't realize it grew it's borders 400% to do so. I'd be curious to know how it fairs on a list like this. I've never been, but I have to assume there's evidence of significant decline in some of it's core neighborhoods.
Makes sense. Smaller college towns/cities were able to recover better in the city limits. Of course, cities don't exist in a vacuum and many people who lived in the principle city just moved to the suburbs and made more money and have a bigger house. Metro's do matter in context, but I'm kind of surprised Baltimore and St. Louis aren't flip-flopped with each other though. My impression was that Baltimore was always a little more healthier socioeconomically than STL, but I guess it's the reverse.
Is the article taking into account the whole MSA or just the city proper?
MSA wise Baltimore for sure has the stronger economy. Baltimore proper however is more socioeconomically bisected than St. Louis with a dwindling "middle" ground so it's going to loose ground there.
This is interesting info, thanks for sharing. I would have assumed Buffalo had always been ahead of Rochester in GDP - at least over the past 50-60 years. I guess having an NFL franchise really affects perception in that way.
Buffalo has always been a little bit bigger, but Rochester isn't that much smaller in terms of population and long had/has a bigger corporate presence. Keep in mind that bot of these cities are only an hour or so from each other and their metro areas touch. In fact, if you combined the metro areas, its land area would be smaller than or on par with metros such as Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, while having roughly the same population(about 2.2-2.3 million). So, that may be something else to keep in mind with both of those areas.
Also, Buffalo has had money poured into it via the Buffalo Billion(plus). So, that has likely helped to bolster its economy.
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