Rust Belt, USA

• When did the decline of the heavy manufacturing industry in the USA's rust belt begin?

  1950s
• What did decline of the heavy manufacturing industry (deindustrialisation) in the USA’s Rust Belt lead to?

  higher levels of unemployment in the region

  • Cheaper imports increased 
  • Manufacturing shifted south due to cheaper labour
  • The increased automation of industrial processes
• What is the Rust belt, USA?


  the informal name for parts of Northeast USA that have experienced large scale decline since the 1950s

  including Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Chicago
• what did Detroit use to be?


  the booming centre of the US car industry between 1920 and 1960
• why did people migrate into Detroit between 1920 and 1960?


  due to the high wages and good quality of life
• what did Detroit develop a large number of and why?


  schools

  to accommodate the growing number of young families entering the city

  between 1900 and 1960, the population of Detroit grew from 286,000 to 1.67 million
• why did things start to go wrong?

  overseas competition from Japan and South Korea led to Detroit's car manufacturers (e.g Ford) to increase mechanisation in their factories in order to reduce labour costs to compete with Japan who had a competitive edge due to using lean manufacturing methods
• What did Detroit do when Japan began competing with them in car manufacturing e.g Toyota?


  reduced the workforce needed to run the factories to cut labour costs

  wages were cut due to mechanisation to reflect the lower level of skill now needed to work the job
• What happened when the workforce in factories in Detroit was reduced?


  many white workers (who tended to be more educated and more affluent) migrated out of the city

  as people left the city businesses and services closed, causing Detroit to enter a spiral of decline

  this left the city with thousands of abandoned buildings
• 2010 stat?


  by 2010 1/4 of Detroit's 138 square mile area was vacant
• 2013 stat?


  Detroit declared itself Bankrupt in 2013, owing US$18 billion in federal debt
• 2022 stat?


  in 2022 Detroit's poverty rate was 3 times higher than the national average
• what is the Rust Belt, USA?


  a once-powerful manufacturing region, famous for steel and car production, that fell into decline following global shift, automation, and increased free trade
• what does the spiral of decline in Detroit cause?


  leads to further job losses and greater decline

  the spiral of decline causes hard-to-stop loss of jobs, people, and revenue

  causes people to have less attachment to an area, less trust in people in positions of power, and increased segregation of different socio-economic groups

  these results are inter-generational, unless the decline is broken by effective regeneration schemes