Quote:
Originally Posted by The North One
IDK I think the massive polluting steel mill is really holding Gary back more than anything else, otherwise it would be a much better choice for urbanists looking for cheap housing to start settling in especially since it's right on the lovely Indiana dunes. The steel mill kinda ruins that.
|
gary is too far from chicago to get urban transplants from the city. it's 25 miles from downtown chicago. and chicago iteslf already has dozens of sq. miles of forlorn neighborhoods on the southside chock-full of cheap housing that would have to fill up first before you saw much in the way of meaningful numbers of urbanists moving to gary (and gary really isn't all that urban of a place, any random southside neighborhood will have a much denser built form).
as for US Steel's Gary Works (the largest in the US), it, along with other associated industrial lands, occupies ~6.5 miles of Gary's 11 miles lake michigan shoreline. all told, it's about
8.5 sq. miles of land. it obliterated the dunes that were there when it was built over a century ago. and now, even it were to close, you'd be looking at decades-worth of environmental clean-up.
and that's not to mention that the #2 Steel plant in the US is located ~6 miles west of Gary along the lake at Indiana Harbor, and the #3 steel plant in the US is located ~10 miles east of gary at Burns Harbor (both now owned by ArcelorMittal). all told, NW Indiana holds half of the nation's BOF steel production capacity.
HALF!
yes, steel production is a dirty, nasty business, the heaviest of all the heavy industries, but it has to be done somewhere. it's probably best to continue doing it where it's always been done.