|
The Rust Belt is a term for the region straddling the upper Northeastern United States, the Great Lakes, and the Midwest States, referring to economic decline, population loss, and urban decay due to the shrinking of its once powerful industrial sector. The term gained popularity in the U.S. in the 1980s.〔Crandall, Robert W. ''The Continuing Decline of Manufacturing in the Rust Belt''. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1993.〕 The Rust Belt begins in New York and traverses to the west through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, ending in northern Illinois and eastern Wisconsin. Previously it was known as the industrial heartland of America. However, industry has been declining in the region since the mid-20th century due to a variety of economic factors, such as the transfer of manufacturing further West, increased automation, the decline of the US steel and coal industries, globalization, and internationalization. While some cities and towns have managed to adapt by shifting focus towards services, others have not fared as well, witnessing rising poverty and declining populations.〔https://books.google.com/books?id=cbGx6yogxyoC&pg=PA9&dq=bruce+springsteen+poverty&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JlvMUufCCYOEhQedl4GYCg&ved=0CFIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=bruce%20springsteen%20poverty&f=false〕 == Background == In the twentieth century local economies in these states specialized in large scale manufacturing of finished medium to heavy industrial and consumer products, as well as the transportation and processing of the raw materials required for heavy industry.〔Teaford, Jon C. ''Cities of the Heartland: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Midwest''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.〕 The area was referred to as the Manufacturing Belt,〔Meyer, David R. 1989. "Midwestern Industrialization and the American Manufacturing Belt in the Nineteenth Century." ''Journal of Economic History'' 49(4):921–937.〕 Factory Belt, or Steel Belt as opposed to the agricultural Midwestern states forming the so-called Corn Belt, and Great Plains states that are often called the "breadbasket of America".〔(Fifty States: The Heartland. )〕 The flourishing of industrial manufacturing in the region was caused in part by the close proximity to the Great Lakes waterways, and abundance of paved roads, water canals and railroads. After the transportation infrastructure linked the iron ore found in northern Minnesota and Upper Michigan with the coal mined from Appalachian Mountains, the Steel Belt was born. Soon it developed into the Factory Belt with its great American manufacturing cities: Chicago, Buffalo, Detroit, Milwaukee, Gary, Cincinnati, Toledo, Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh among others. This region for decades served as a magnet for immigrants from Austria-Hungary, Poland and Russia who provided the industrial facilities with the inexpensive labor resources.〔McClelland, Ted. ''Nothin' but Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America's Industrial Heartland''. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013.〕 Following several "boom" periods from the late-19th to the mid-20th century, cities in this area in the end of the century started to struggle to adapt to a variety of adverse economic and social conditions. They include: the US steel and iron industries' decline, the movement of manufacturing to the southeastern states with their lower labor costs,〔Alder, Simeon, David Lagakos, and Lee Ohanian. "The Decline of the US Rust Belt: A Macroeconomic Analysis." 2012. (PDF )〕 the layoffs due to the rise of automation in industrial processes, a decreased need for labor in making steel products, the internationalization of American business, and the liberalization of foreign trade policies due to globalization.〔High, Steven C. Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America's Rust Belt, 1969–1984. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.〕 Big and small cities that struggled the most with these conditions soon encountered several difficulties in common, namely: population loss and brain drain, depletion of local tax revenues, high unemployment and crime, drugs, swelling welfare rolls, poor municipal credit ratings and deficit spending.〔Jargowsky, Paul A. ''Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City''. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997.〕〔Hagedorn, John M., and Perry Macon. ''People and Folks: Gangs, Crime and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City''. Lake View Press, Chicago, IL, (paperback: ISBN 0-941702-21-9; clothbound: ISBN 0-941702-20-0), 1988.〕〔"Rust Belt Woes: Steel out, drugs in," ''The Northwest Florida Daily News'', January 16, 2008. (PDF )〕〔Beeson, Patricia E. "Sources of the decline of manufacturing in large metropolitan areas." ''Journal of Urban Economics'' 28, no. 1 (1990): 71–86.〕〔Higgins, James Jeffrey. ''Images of the Rust Belt''. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1999.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rust Belt」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|