Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno
Geography is a huge reason to why the rust belt should be limited to the Ohio river and Great lakes, inland industrial towns that were reliant on rail, barge, and lake shipping to get their products out to the rest of the country and world.
That is the reason Baltimore and NYC and Philly are not "rust belt" they may have had factories but a much longer and more important part of their economies and histories are shipping goods from the interior out to the world and importing goods from the world for the heartland to consume.
Importing and exporting is a large reason why the East coast was and is the primary financial hub. (same reason its primarily San Francisco in the west)
Chicago is a little more unique as it became an inland shipping center for the entire Midwest, both industrial and agricultural hence the commodities market.
So yes geography is absolutely inseparable from economics and culture and defining a term like the "rust belt"
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First of all, do you know why this area is called the 'Rust Belt' to begin with? It isn't about who had manufacturing the longest or even the specific industry but areas who shared a common pattern of post war de-industrialization. It's only geographic in that heavy industry as well as the US population were heavily concentrated in the Midwest and Northeast. The South, Texas, and West were still largely underpopulated. And were not known for manufacturing but mostly agriculture. Texas was all about ranching and later oil.