Quote:
Originally Posted by dc_denizen
Abandonment in certain neighborhoods due to white flight and crime is way different than what happened in Youngstown (20000 jobs gone in one day, when Youngstown sheet and tube collapsed)
Northeastern Ohio is the rust belt par excellence . Chicago isn’t in the same league
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US Steel's South Works on Chicago's southside once employed 20,000 steel workers with solid middle class jobs. Today it employs zero people and the 600 acres of prime lakefront land it sat upon have been cleared and remain fallow 3 decades after the plant closed.
That story was repeated dozens of times at various industrial plants all up and down the Calumet River on Chicago's south side, from the 70s through today. Plants closed, hundreds of thousands of good middle class union jobs gone forever.
Chicago only came out on the other side so much better than Youngstown because it also has an enormous base of corporate, finance, and transportation jobs that allowed it to weather the storm better.
So while Chicago might not be the very buckle of the rust belt like NE Ohio, it's definitely still part of the belt.