This is a pretty interesting question for the region, I think. I’ve done some work with a project called “From Rust Belt to Artist Belt”, and I’ve been surprised by how negative people’s reaction are to the use of the term “Rust Belt”. For me, as Rebecca noted, it encapsulates a lot of history, and it invokes this idea of the region that “built America”. But certainly I can understand why people shudder at its mention, particularly given its usage and associations in popular culture. It’s a bit like the use of the term “liberal” or even “socialist”. While I personally have positive-to-neutral associations with both terms, the characterization of these two philosophies in popular culture have made it less palatable to self-identify with either. “Progressive”, a term that lacks much of the baggage while still holding similar ideals, seems a reasonable proxy for what O’Neill is trying to do with “Water Belt”. To me, “Water Belt” and the alternate tag I hear proposed a lot (“Great Lakes Region”) lack distinctiveness and sound a bit focus group-ey to me. Don’t think I’m quite there yet; I’d rather counter people’s underlying presumptions about the Rust Belt rather than renaming it.

I’m partial to “Rust Belt” too. I suspect liking/disliking it is often a generational issue — people who remember gleaming steel think of Rust as a bad thing, but those of us who don’t remember anything else and LIKE it here…well, Rust is just our culture.

I always think about a story from an old episode of This American Life, where this guy transforms his Hasidic friend into an underground rock star called Curly Oxide. They came up with the name Curly Oxide because oxidation (i.e., rust) represents one thing changing into another thing. Not decay – metamorphosis!