Rust Belt
The Rust Belt , formerly the Manufacturing Belt , is the oldest and largest industrial region in the United States . It stretches in the northeast of the USA along the Great Lakes from Chicago via Detroit , Cleveland , Cincinnati and Pittsburgh to the east coast to the foothills of the metropolitan regions of Boston , Washington, DC and New York City . It includes parts of Illinois , Indiana , Michigan , Ohio , Pennsylvania , New York and New Jersey , and West Virginia , which was a center of coal mining, is also included in some cases . Seldom parts of Iowa and Wisconsin are also counted as part of the Rust Belt.
industrialization
The industrialization continued after the declaration of independence in 1776 a. The first manufacture was a cotton mill founded by an immigrant from England in 1790. Other textile processing plants soon followed, mostly on the rivers of New England . The port cities on the east coast were gateways for European immigrants and important trading centers at the time, but they did not belong to the Rust Belt, which is much more characterized by heavy industry , iron, coal and steel than by textiles and trade.
With the development of the hard coal and ore fields in the Appalachian Mountains from 1893 and the iron ore deposits on the Ohio River from 1865, growth shifted to western Pennsylvania. The beginning of oil production in Titusville (Pennsylvania) from 1859, which formed the basis for the later Standard Oil Company , additionally accelerated the process. The development of the Manufacturing Belt was driven by the strong expansion of the US railroad network . A composite industry developed . At the beginning of the 20th century the Manufacturing Belt had reached its full size; the major cities of Chicago and Milwaukee at the western end were the center of the food industry at this time , while the emerging automotive industry was concentrated in Detroit and the steel industry in Pittsburgh. Until the early 1970s, the region was by far the largest industrial area in the United States and one of the largest in the world.
crisis
Since the crisis of the 1970s , the transition from the Manufacturing Belt to the Rust Belt ( Rust because of the old iron industry) began, and the region's economic importance declined rapidly. The first signs of decline, or at least a structural crisis, were already there towards the end of the 19th century, when much of the iron ore production was relocated to the Upper Lake . In the 1960s, with the migration of heavy industry to the cheaper developing countries, the real decline began, jobs in mining and heavy industry disappeared. The Sun Belt in the south of the country has now replaced the Manufacturing Belt as the fastest growing region . This structural change had different effects from region to region: cities like Cincinnati or Pittsburgh attracted technology and service companies, in which numerous new jobs were created, others like Detroit or Youngstown lost more than half of their population since the 1960s and are high in unemployment and crime and urban decay.
| city | Population change | Year 2015 | Year 2000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Detroit , Michigan | −28.8% | 677.116 | 951.270 |
| Gary , Indiana | −24.9% | 77,156 | 102,746 |
| Flint , Michigan | −21.3% | 98.310 | 124.943 |
| Youngstown , Ohio | −21.2% | 64,628 | 82.026 |
| Saginaw , Michigan | −20.1% | 49,347 | 61,799 |
| Cleveland , Ohio | −18.9% | 388.072 | 478.403 |
| Dayton , Ohio | −15.4% | 140,599 | 166.179 |
| Niagara Falls , New York | −12.0% | 48,916 | 55,593 |
| Buffalo , New York | −11.9% | 258.071 | 292,648 |
| Canton , Ohio | −11.0% | 71,885 | 80,806 |
| Toledo , Ohio | −10.8% | 279.789 | 313,619 |
| Lakewood , Ohio | −10.6% | 50,656 | 56,646 |
| Decatur , Illinois | −10.5% | 73,254 | 81,860 |
| Cincinnati , Ohio | −9.9% | 298,550 | 331.285 |
| Pontiac , Michigan | −9.7% | 59,917 | 66,337 |
| St. Louis , Missouri | −9.3% | 315,685 | 348.189 |
| Akron , Ohio | −9.0% | 197,542 | 217,074 |
| Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania | −9.0% | 304.391 | 334,563 |
| Springfield , Ohio | −8.7% | 59,680 | 65,358 |
| Lorain , Ohio | −7.3% | 63,647 | 68,652 |
| Charleston , West Virginia | −6.9% | 49,736 | 53,421 |
| Parma , Ohio | −6.7% | 79,937 | 85,655 |
| Chicago , Illinois | −6.1% | 2,720,546 | 2,896,016 |
| South Bend , Indiana | −5.8% | 101,516 | 107,789 |
politics
Due to the population structure, which was shaped by industrial workers, the urban centers of the Rust Belt were considered to be the stronghold of the Democratic Party and thus part of the so-called “blue wall” . Donald Trump's election victory in 2016 was attributed, among other things, by election researchers to the fact that he succeeded in breaking the “blue wall” through electoral successes in the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
See also
literature
- Daniel R. Dennison, Stuart L. Hill: Revival in the rust belt. Tracking the evolution of an urban industrial region. A report on the 1st year of the Oakland County business survey . University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1987, ISBN 0-87944-322-7 (local study).
- Steven High: Industrial sunset. The making of North America's rust belt, 1969-1984 . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2003, ISBN 0-8020-3738-0 .
- Steven Henry Lopez: Reorganizing the Rust Belt. An inside study of the American labor movement . University of California Press, Berkeley 2004, ISBN 0-520-23565-7 .
- Chad Broughton: Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities. Oxford University Press, New York 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-976561-4 .
- Tracy Neumann: Remaking the Rust Belt: The Postindustrial Transformation of North America. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2019, ISBN 978-0-8122-2438-2 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ wisegeek.com What is the Rust Belt?
- ^ Titusville, Pennsylvania, 1896 . 1896. Retrieved July 17, 2013.
- ↑ 1960 Census of Population, Vol. I. Characteristics of the Population. (ZIP; 182 MB) Part 37 Ohio ; Chapter 2 Number of inhabitants . census.gov, accessed October 21, 2019 .
- ↑ Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2015 . Retrieved July 2, 2016.
- ↑ Article in the Washington Post