Rustbelt

Starting in the late 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution unfolded across North America, the region stretching from the northeastern United States across the southern shores of the Great Lakes became the largest complex of manufacturing firms in the world. Scores of industries flourished there, fueled by waves of immigrant workers and a rich infrastructure of rail lines, iron ore, and coal deposits. The textile industry predominated in New England, and garments were widely produced in New York City. Connecticut and Philadelphia were major centers of shipbuilding. The steel industry gave rise to cities such as Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, and Cleveland. Akron was the largest rubber producer on the planet. Chicago was simultaneously a port, a meatpacking center, and a steel producer. Milwaukee became famous as a center of beer production. With the rise of the automobile industry, Detroit became the epicenter of automobile production as well as the model of industrial organization known as Fordism. Numerous smaller cities found niches in automobile parts, machine tools, or agricultural equipment. The Manufacturing Belt was by far the wealthiest part of the United States, with a large middle class generated by industrial jobs. The success and health of this region were evident well past World War II, when it played a major role in ensuring American economic hegemony worldwide.

The restless geographies of capitalism, however, ensure that one region's comparative advantage never lasts for long. Starting in the late 1960s and accelerating rapidly throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the former Manufacturing Belt was besieged by mounting international competition (e.g., from the newly industrializing countries), technological displacement, and a growing crisis of profitability. Deindustrialization of the Manufacturing Belt involved numerous plant and factory closures, mass layoffs, rising unemployment, and the deterioration of standards of living for millions of people. As the multiplier effects from closed manufacturing firms reverberated across local economies, the area witnessed concomitant declines in real estate values and retail sales. What was once the pride of the American economy had now become increasingly stagnant. As the region was abandoned by capital, the Manufacturing Belt became increasingly known as the Rustbelt, often in contrast to the growing population and political power of the Sunbelt. Rustbelt (or even Frostbelt) and Sunbelt, however, are not products of climate but rather reflect the uneven development that is an inherent inescapable part of capitalist landscapes. In this sense, the Rustbelt resembles other sites of deindustrialization such as the British Midlands.

Of course, not all parts of the Rustbelt were equally affected. Some cities, such as Pittsburgh and New York, reinvented themselves around producer services. New England prospered with the growth of high-technology industries. Other places, such as Detroit, sank into a near permanent state of economic collapse. Yet other places hoped for, and sometimes[Page 419] achieved, industrial resurgence with the aid of foreign direct investment. Thus, the Rustbelt serves as a reminder of how rapidly and traumatically capitalism can unmake, as well as create, regional economies.