Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio, is an industrial city of about 500,000 that became a national symbol of urban decline in the 1970's (MIT DUSP 2022). Cleveland grew and grew until 1970. Then it began a version of shrinkage that was not terribly creative and not terribly well managed. Cleveland was an Industrial Revolution city, like Pittsburgh and Birmingham, England. Cleveland was a place that made things for a very long time and what is left of that industry is exactly what Ned told you. This place still makes things, barely, as Ned said. It is a place where the economy is at risk. For most of the 20th century, Cleveland was one of America's largest cities, but after World War II, it suffered from post-war deindustrialization, or the reduction of manufacturing, and suburbanization, defined as a population shift in historical core cities. The city has pursued a gradual recovery since the 1980s, becoming a major national center for healthcare and the arts by the early 21st century. In the 1970s, Cleveland lost 23.6 percent of its population, a staggering amount, even considering national trends. In that same decade, it became the first major American city since the Great Depression to default on its loans. Environmental studies warned that the Cuyahoga River was dead and Lake Erie was dying. The steel factories and manufacturing hubs of the city began their descent (Petkovic 2015).