These cities were some of the largest and fastest-growing cities in the nation by World War I.

“Many cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, Dayton, Detroit, Erie, Flint, Rochester, South Bend, Toledo, and Youngstown have experienced incredible ups and downs over the last 150 years.

In his introduction to EIG as the new Legacy Cities Fellow, Akron, OH planner Jason Segedy eloquently described the Rust Belt’s former and current position in the hierarchy of American cities: They have given rise to Rust Belt urbanism. This group has refused to accept the fate of a lost region. Rather than focusing on the negatives that defined it for a half-century, more people are touting the region’s assets and potential. They embrace the region’s history but see opportunity in an uncertain future. A rising number of today’s Rust Belt residents recognize the potential of the region. And so people yearn for restoration, a return to what once was.įrom that, however, an alternative perspective has emerged. There’s a prevailing sense that, after experiencing so much loss, for so long, the future must also be bleak. Productivity gains and automation have further reduced reliance on a low- and mid-skilled workforce. The region’s teeming factories employing thousands of workers have spread to nations across the globe. Those who remember the Rust Belt’s halcyon days are mostly senior citizens now. This perception has been internalized by many of the Rust Belt’s own residents. There are some who believe the Rust Belt should simply accept its diminished fate and fade into oblivion. The broad swath of territory that covers the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, centered on the Great Lakes, has seen decades of economic retrenchment, out-migration, unresolved racial tensions, and a growing sense of irrelevance - especially when compared to America’s globally-connected coastal cities and fast-growing Sun Belt cities. The Rust Belt has been given up for dead, at least economically, for the last 50 years.

The rust belt