07.26.17
The 40 year slump — in cities
Here, portrayed in thumbnail sketches, Wall Street/24-7’s 50 worst cities in the US, ranked at MSN.
Detroit is the expected number one. But there are some surprises — Miami Beach and Atlanta — for wide disparities in wealth. The rest mostly display hollowed out heartland names, Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis, Rochester, Indianapolis, Rochester, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Youngstown, Cincy, Rockford (home of Cheap Trick!) all familiar, sent into irreversible decline by deindustrialization. Interior cities in Massachusetts don’t share in any of the growth of the Boston mega-nexus where Harvard, MIT and big pharma reign supreme. It literally is two states.
Reading, PA, is included in the thirties, a once pretty city in the countryside suffering a steady loss in population and fortune since the bankruptcy of the Reading railroad, a coal and steel shipper in 1971. The other winner in Pennsylvania is Philly.
None of the cities listed show any real prospects, a reflection of how the American empire has geniunely declined on the domestic front. It is not a picture of a country poised for any type of recovery.