Cleveland still operates like a body with two heads that have lived different lives.

To what extent is black culture representative of Rust Belt Chic? This is important on a number of levels, for if the grit-chic brand is (or is destined to become) heavily white and hipster—or white and Springsteen-like—or white and ethic, then what is occurring is an economic development strategy catering to part of a city’s flavor, which only serves to reinforce said segregation that so often kills any chance of building a mass of dynamic thought.

Editor’s note: Our faithful readers will note we recently featured a short post with a trailer and some information about a new documentary, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, which deals with an infamous public housing complex in St. Louis, built in the 1950s and torn down in 1972.

The film’s director, Chad Freidrichs, recently spoke with Rust Wire about this myth and the film it inspired.
Watch the trailer for the movie here. Check out its Flickr page, with great historical photos here. Read more about the complex and its history here.
And …

The Rust Belt is no stranger to America’s drug war. Nor is the story of the three decade long mobilization against illegal narcotics a new one. However in her recent book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, former Stanford Law professor, civil rights lawyer, and current Ohio State University faculty member, Michelle Alexander convincingly paints the war on drugs as far more than just a failed multi-decade policy that has resulted in America becoming the prison capital of the world. Instead, she positions the drug …

Pittsburgh’s population has shrunk over the last decade, falling by 24,000 persons between 2000 and 2008. In the 2009 Democratic primary race for mayor, Councilman Patrick Dowd even made reversing population decline a signature issue of his campaign, (as you can see in this video).

We can get by without steel mills, but new residents are sorely needed to support the legacy costs of public servants employed when Pittsburgh had double the public to serve.

While Pittsburgh’s population dips, the U.S. Hispanic demographic drives American population growth and is projected to triple by 2050. Immigration accounts for recent trends, but projections also depend on higher Hispanic birth rates.

According to this random link on city-data, Detroit has lured nearly 21,000 white people back to the city since 2000.
I have never heard anything about this before. Does anyone a little closer to the situation in Detroit have any evidence that this is true? The information is based on the Census’ American Community Survey estimates, which are sometimes suspect.
Does anyone from Detroit have any possible explanations? Just curious. If this is true, it’s important.
-A.S.
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The disappearance of jobs, the decline of schools, social isolation, and the rise of the drug trade took a frightful toll on inner city areas. Youngstown fared among the worst. Youngstown’s murder rate—which remained unexceptional for decades—skyrocketed during the 1990s. In 1991, the homicide rate for Youngstown was 60 per 100,000, whereas the country as a whole averaged only 10 per 100,000. In 1995, Youngstown had more homicides than the city of Pittsburgh. Though the crime has widely fluctuated, the city remains known for its high crime and murder rate.

Sociologist William Julius Wilson’s work has outlined the importance of historical data when examining inner city violence: “Unlike the present period, inner city communities prior to 1960 exhibited features of social organization

The recent high profile shooting of an elderly couple leaving church on Youngstown’s south side—the second such murder of a parishioner at Saint Dominic’s this year—has rocked the city. The usual calls for greater police crackdowns and the typical mystified responses from the public and the media make it clear that few people understand why exactly a cycle of crime is playing out in our inner cities. The only explanations usually given involve the same stories of the loss of manufacturing jobs and the closures of the mills in the 1970s. Almost none address the fact that Youngstown’s—and indeed almost every ghetto in the Rust Belt—has largely been created by economic structural changes that have disproportionately affected African Americans and by deliberately exclusionary policies designed to reinforce segregation.

In the 1950s urban renewal projects changed the face of entire sections of the city of Youngstown. African Americans found themselves time and again in front of the wrecking ball as highways and industrial parks bisected or obliterated their neighborhoods.

How segregated is your city?

You can see at a glance thanks to a project by developed by Bill Rankin, focusing on the city of Chicago. His idea was expanded to 40 US cities by Eric Fisher and posted on Flickr.

Using U.S. Census data from 2000, he created a map where one dot equals 25 people. The dots are then color-coded based on race: White is pink; Black is blue; Hispanic is orange, and Asian is green.

The New York Times is carrying an interesting article about the city of Memphis and the shrinking ranks of the local black middle-class.
As a result of predatory lending and job loss, residents the majority-black city have seen decades of economic progress reversed, The Times reports. The article focuses on the role played by Wells Fargo, and outlines the mortgage lender’s targeted efforts to sell high-interest loans in black neighborhoods. The results are hallowed out neighborhoods and declining wealth for blacks and latinos in metro Memphis.
According to the article, the weath …

Residents of St. Louis County showed their support for the local public transit system this week, voting 63-37 percent in favor of a 1/2-cent sales tax increase.

The increased revenues were needed to ward off major cuts for Metro, the local transit authority. County residents had rejected a similar initiative in 2008, according to the St. Louis American.
A broad coalition came out in support of this measure, including corporate leaders, university chancellors and black clergy.
-AS
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