Where Is The Rust Belt?

[badrunner]

I'd rather live in Gary though, all things considered...

[DCReid]

Interesting video about Flint. It once employed 80K GM workers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjwQ3odIPjE

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by JManc

Flint is depressing, Gary is post apocalyptic.

Ding ding ding!

No one was trying to argue that Flint doesn't have issues, or that it's downtown is some marvelous small city urban wonderland (it's obviously not).

But pretty much everyone agrees that Gary's downtown is in even rougher shape...... except for this one guy.....

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

The numerical drop for Detroit is perhaps a bit eye-opening, but it's really the percentage that matters.

I mean, Chicago lost ~925,000 people from 1950 - 2010, but as that was only a 25% drop, it wasn't nearly as broadly damaging to the city.


What's more, as I mentioned earlier, Detroit and the other larger cities on that list got big enough to really become serious centers of urban gravity, such that even as city neighborhoods emptied out, enough big assets remained central enough for at least the downtown cores to survive the worst of the urban dark ages. The smaller places like ESL, Gary, Flint, etc. had much less luck on that front, with the downtowns of ESL and Gary becoming almost entirely irrelevant in a functional sense.

Going back to this, I think Pontiac or Highland Park (maybe especially Highland Park) are more analogous to ESL and Gary than Flint would be. Even though Highland Park is now an enclave that is surrounded by the city of Detroit, it was functionally like East St. Louis in that it grew up as a prewar secondary industrial hub right next to the primary industrial hub. Highland Park and ESL has also been similarly depopulated and discarded. Pontiac is in much better shape than any of the other cities mentioned, but it has somewhat benefited from being the seat of Oakland County.

[Steely Dan]

^ Highland Park, MI seems a bit different than the others to me because, at only ~3.5 miles out from downtown, it's really just a Detroit city neighborhood that avoided annexation, and then imploded later on.

Because ESL and Gary are across state lines from their respective central cities, the dynamics are a bit different. they were never going to be potential annexation targets, and thus have always been much more standalone, in a political sense, than a pace like HP, which is right smack dab in the thick of the municipal, county, and state governments of its main city.

Pontiac is a bit better because it's further out and is at least in a different county, if not a different state, but it didn't collapse as hard.

Maybe the closest analogy you could've had in metro Detroit would've been if Ontario was just another US state and then Windsor did some epic ESL-esqe collapse.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by badrunner

I'd rather live in Gary though, all things considered...

I guess steel mill soot is your thing?

[SIGSEGV]

Gary does have at least one nice area, the annexed town of Miller:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.5998...8192?entry=ttu

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by The North One

I guess steel mill soot is your thing?

Dearborn, Cleveland and Pittsburgh say hello.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Gary does have at least one nice area, the annexed town of Miller:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.5998...8192?entry=ttu

Flint has nice neighborhoods, too. Central Park is immediately adjacent to Downtown and a short walk from Flint's museum district. Nearby East Village is around Mott Community College and is the closest thing Flint has now to a middle-class neighborhood. And there are plenty of other neighborhoods that are still largely intact.

[edale]

Originally Posted by The North One

I guess steel mill soot is your thing?

Probably being a quick commuter rail line away from one of the best cities in North America is more the motivator. Indiana Dunes are also close by, which are supposed to be quite beautiful. Plus, I guess all things considered, steel mill soot > lead-poisoned water...

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ Highland Park, MI seems a bit different than the others to me because, at only ~3.5 miles out from downtown, it's really just a Detroit city neighborhood that avoided annexation, and then imploded later on.

I think it's a little more nuanced. HP should have been a Detroit neighborhood, and it could easily be confused for one, but its function was anything but. Believe it or not, Highland Park's problems actually stem from it not being annexed. Ford saddled the city with legacy institutions and services to maintain on its own that were way too much for a city that size. Highland Park's extravagant civic institutions are/were comparable to what would have been built for a city that peaked at about 4 times the peak of Highland Park.

This is the old Highland Park City Hall and behind it was the old police headquarters: https://maps.app.goo.gl/jEqvQJpKvj32di5q7

This is the old Highland Park library: https://maps.app.goo.gl/noFxJrzdu7HQ6KiAA

The history of Highland Park seems similar, IMO, to Gary and ESL in that it was created to serve industrial corporate interests and then left discarded when the arrangement no longer suited those purposes.

[edale]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I think it's a little more nuanced. HP should have been a Detroit neighborhood, and it could easily be confused for one, but its function was anything but. Believe it or not, Highland Park's problems actually stem from it not being annexed. Ford saddled the city with legacy institutions and services to maintain on its own that were way too much for a city that size. Highland Park's extravagant civic institutions are/were comparable to what would have been built for a city that peaked at about 4 times the peak of Highland Park.

This is the old Highland Park City Hall and behind it was the old police headquarters: https://maps.app.goo.gl/jEqvQJpKvj32di5q7

This is the old Highland Park library: https://maps.app.goo.gl/noFxJrzdu7HQ6KiAA

The history of Highland Park seems similar, IMO, to Gary and ESL in that it was created to serve industrial corporate interests and then left discarded when the arrangement no longer suited those purposes.

Highland Park doesn't look much worse off than the City of Detroit neighborhoods that surround it, though. Hard to make the case that it's worse off today because it's an independent city when the neighborhoods around it are just as blighted and pockmarked by demolition.

Smaller enclave municipalities having their own services to maintain can be a financial burden, for sure, but that doesn't doom all such places. Norwood, Ohio is an enclave municipality completely surrounded by the City of Cincinnati. It was founded as an early suburb of Cincy in the 1870s, and has many of the trappings of a larger city. Perhaps not as extravagant as the institutions in Highland Park, but the City Hall and library are both pretty nice structures. They were really devastated by the departure of a massive GM plant that closed in the 80s, but it's since rebounded in large part due to its proximity to healthy Cincinnati neighborhoods like Hyde Park and Oakley. It has about 20,000 residents in its roughly 3 sq miles, down from ~35,000 at its peak in 1950, but it's doing pretty well now, and never fell nearly as hard as Highland Park, despite having some of the same conditions in place. I think HP suffered because Detroit as a whole suffered, and I'm not sure it was made any worse by being an independent municipality.

[Crawford]

Highland Park, historically, was an upper middle class enclave, so pretty distinct from ESL or Gary. It was more of an executive town than a laborer town.

It was fairly prosperous until about 1970 and remained not that terrible until the 1980s. It still had Chrysler World HQ and a downtown district with a traditional department store into the 1990's. But when it fell, it fell hard. It's so distressed and unable to fufill basic needs it shouldn't exist, but Detroit doesn't want it, so it's basically a ward of the state.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by edale

Highland Park doesn't look much worse off than the City of Detroit neighborhoods that surround it, though. Hard to make the case that it's worse off today because it's an independent city when the neighborhoods around it are just as blighted and pockmarked by demolition.

You're comparing one area of a much larger city to an entire city. Highland Park is in severe financial distress. Much more distress than Detroit has ever encountered. Highland Park has virtually no means to support itself as an independent city anymore. The city's existence was a scheme that had at its foundation a large company that could cover the city's bills (originally Ford, then Chrysler). It doesn't have that anymore and likely never will again.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Highland Park's extravagant civic institutions are/were comparable to what would have been built for a city that peaked at about 4 times the peak of Highland Park.

Right. Highland Park had pretty lavish institutions. Grand civic buildings, a city-funded college, its own water system and the like. It was likely swimming in money pre-1970. It didn't have the typical postwar narrative of race riots, industrial ruin and all that. Wealth flight came later.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by edale

Probably being a quick commuter rail line away from one of the best cities in North America is more the motivator.

I know "quick" is subjective and relative, but I wouldn't call it all that quick.

The train ride from the downtown Gary station into the loop on the South Shore RR takes about an hour.

Originally Posted by edale

Indiana Dunes are also close by, which are supposed to be quite beautiful.

The dunes and beaches of the area are beautiful and tons of fun!

But many unfamiliar first-time visitors to them are often put-off by the presence of the 3 giant lakeshore steel mills in the region.

I've been going down to the dunes my entire life, so I can easily look past all of that, but for others, it's a big deal-breaker issue to look down the beach and see a GIANT industrial facility with smokestacks and such several miles down the shoreline.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by edale

Probably being a quick commuter rail line away from one of the best cities in North America is more the motivator. Indiana Dunes are also close by, which are supposed to be quite beautiful. Plus, I guess all things considered, steel mill soot > lead-poisoned water...

Flint's lead service lines are all replaced now so uh no.. you don't have to worry about the water there. Also you all drink out of lead pipes so it's hardly an issue exclusive to Flint, also applies to Gary. Newark just had a similar lead water crisis much more recently.

Indiana dunes are still right next to a steel mill, so hard pass on that one. Commuter rail to Chicago doesn't mean anything you're still living in Gary. Is normal life even possible in Gary? Where would you even go to the gym? I guess you have McDonalds to eat out, get your groceries from Dollar General.

Also there's tons of great nature and lakes around Flint.

I'll take Flint easily any day if I had to choose between the two. All things considered.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I think it's a little more nuanced.

Of course there are similarities between them, as all of 'em have been violently put through the de-urbanization ringer.

But ESL and Gary still seem more "othered" to me, in both a political and social/cultural sense, by virtue of being located in different states from their respective main cities, as opposed to being literally surrounded by them, as enclaved HP is in Detroit.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Dearborn, Cleveland and Pittsburgh say hello.

I'd live nowhere near Zug island, so no argument there.

However the prevailing wings blow to Canada, so I don't think Dearborn has that much to worry about.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by The North One

I'd live nowhere near Zug island, so no argument there.

However the prevailing wings blow to Canada, so I don't think Dearborn has that much to worry about.

Zug's furnaces have been decommissioned for several years now.

The only integrated steel mill still operating in Michigan is Dearborn Works, now owned by cleveland-cliffs, which is roughly 3 miles upstream on the rouge from zug island, and only 6 miles west of downtown Detroit, so very much an issue for the city's west side.

But I believe it's been downsized to just one blast furnace now, and it's entirely possible that it could be taken offline altogether in the not too distant future.