Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I understand the glaring answer is de-industrialization, but what exactly caused such a sharp turn in 1950 to cause so many great cities to decline for so long? Many cities were booming before this decade: Cleveland, Saint Louis, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit (And many more) were all at their highest populations. Was it certain laws, taxes etc? Also, why didnt it happen sooner or in various places, rather than ALL 'Rust Belt' cities? There could probably be many books written about the exact reason/domino effect that occurred, I realize this. I've got some far out theories about what happened, but I'm sure the thread will devolve into ad hom attacks directed at me, so I'll leave it at that.
- Cars were becoming more portable, faster, safer, more efficient
- The United States and Soviet Union were at odds during this time, people moved into more spaced living conditions in the suburbs, often with underground bomb protection bunkers (fear of nuclear war bombs)
- The infrastructure and sanitary conditions in the inner city at the time were awful; lots of diseases, issues, drainage and sewer systems inefficient or lacking, so on and so forth
- The middle class was beginning to explode in size and people were having more children and needed more personal space than the big city to raise them in (enter suburbs)
- Household sizes in the inner city were beginning to drop, as families began looking to suburbs as superior living environments as opposed to the inner, compact, built up big city
The GI Bill and other federal programs were generous for buyers of new houses but not for others.
After the ware, older buildings hadn't been maintained, let alone renovated, since the 1920s.
Many urban areas had factories, which often spewed dense particulates that made it hard to breathe (to say nothing of invisible fumes of various kinds).
Racism obviously.
And the feeling that neighborhoods were emptying out or declining and you'd better get out quickly. (Often tied to racism but not dependent on being racist oneself)
Suburbanization really started to ramp up after WWII. IMO, it started as a fad; in the "conformist 50s" everyone who was anyone wanted to live the "Leave it to Beaver" lifestyle. But, that's just one of the factors that got the ball rolling. There was also the "great migration" that introduced a lot of poor, relatively uneducated people from the south into the mix. (as a side note, my grandfather and family were part of that migration. Although they were poor to begin with, they decided to move north--to Canton, but could just as easily have been Akron, Youngstown, Cleveland, etc.--after losing what little they had in a devastating flood, in 1950.)
So, the trend toward suburbanization, and influx of people from the great migration helped destabilize home values in some city neighborhoods, which encouraged more people to leave for the suburbs, and so on. This downward spiral started slow, and might have stabilized over time. But, racial tensions in the late 60s/early 70s boiled over, and then de-industrialization in the late 70s/early 80s were the one-two punch that really hit rust-belt cities hard, and why, IMO, it's taken longer for them to begin to rebound.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,570 posts, read 81,147,605 times
Reputation: 57792
Two years before I was born, and yes, my parents got married in 1950 after he returned from WWII and got a job, and saved up the down payment. He left the city and bought in the suburbs with plans to raise a family (9 of us in all by 1969). Where he left (West Oakland, CA) had gotten pretty rough while he had been in the navy, though his parents remained there, later moving farther east several times until finally forced to move out to suburbs by frequent breakins in the 1980a. The return of the soldiers had a significant impact on unemployment in the cities, with a lot more competition for jobs, and returning GIs welcomed back by employers.
I understand the glaring answer is de-industrialization, but what exactly caused such a sharp turn in 1950 to cause so many great cities to decline for so long? Many cities were booming before this decade: Cleveland, Saint Louis, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit (And many more) were all at their highest populations. Was it certain laws, taxes etc? Also, why didnt it happen sooner or in various places, rather than ALL 'Rust Belt' cities? There could probably be many books written about the exact reason/domino effect that occurred, I realize this. I've got some far out theories about what happened, but I'm sure the thread will devolve into ad hom attacks directed at me, so I'll leave it at that.
If you want to talk about Pittsburgh, you need to understand the history of the steel industry. Many people said the long, long steelworker's strike of 1959 was the "beginning of the end" of the US steel industry. Within 13 years, people were leaving Pittsburgh, the MSA, not just the city, in droves. The steel industry finally crashed in 1982. Within a few weeks, mills that had employed hundreds if not thousands closed for good. "The unemployment rate came down after January 1983 -- slowly, painfully, not because people were returning to work here but because the young and able-bodied left the region, and thus its labor force." http://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...15-1959-120091 https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/p...ttsburgh%2C_PA In desperate 1983, there was nowhere for Pittsburgh's economy to go but up | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Suburbanization really started to ramp up after WWII. IMO, it started as a fad; in the "conformist 50s" everyone who was anyone wanted to live the "Leave it to Beaver" lifestyle. But, that's just one of the factors that got the ball rolling. There was also the "great migration" that introduced a lot of poor, relatively uneducated people from the south into the mix. (as a side note, my grandfather and family were part of that migration. Although they were poor to begin with, they decided to move north--to Canton, but could just as easily have been Akron, Youngstown, Cleveland, etc.--after losing what little they had in a devastating flood, in 1950.)
So, the trend toward suburbanization, and influx of people from the great migration helped destabilize home values in some city neighborhoods, which encouraged more people to leave for the suburbs, and so on. This downward spiral started slow, and might have stabilized over time. But, racial tensions in the late 60s/early 70s boiled over, and then de-industrialization in the late 70s/early 80s were the one-two punch that really hit rust-belt cities hard, and why, IMO, it's taken longer for them to begin to rebound.
Are we pretending that the immigrants in northern cities were wealthy and educated?
Would've loved to have lived in one of the major midwestern / northern cities during the 1940s. If for no other reason but to witness what life was life in urban America during war time.
If you want to get technical. Cleveland, Ohio in reality reached it's peak in 1954 (That's the last year anyone remembers Cleveland having a population gain). Although again, people like my dad who was born in 1949 will tell you no one noticed the "decline" really until 10 years later in the mid-60s or really a few years later since many urban high schools in the midwest at least were still seeing increased enrollments every year. I know my mom's old high school in Toledo, OH, when she attended back in the late 60s was still seeing enrollments of over 3,000 students (school still exists today but I believe has well under 1,000 students left).
So my point is I don't know if the turn was that sharp in 1950. I think certainly things began to shift but many of today's suburbs that we're accustomed to in reality probably didn't begin to boom until the 1970s. I know in the case of Cleveland, Toledo and Columbus, Ohio this is the case. The high schools in Cleveland City and Toledo Public back in the 70s and early 80s were still the largest in their areas. Now they are some of the smallest or they've been taken down in some sad cases.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
