Plant shutdowns in Canada and the United States from 1969 to 1984 led to an ongoing and ravaging industrial decline of the Great Lakes Region. Industrial Sunset offers a comparative regional analysis of the economic and cultural devastation caused by the shutdowns, and provides an insightful examination of how mill and factory workers on both sides of the border made sense of their own displacement. The history of deindustrialization rendered in cultural terms reveals the importance of community and national identifications in how North Americans responded to the problem. Based on the plant shutdown stories told by over 130 industrial workers, and drawing on extensive archival and published sources, and songs and poetry from the time period covered, Steve High explores the central issues in the history and contemporary politics of plant closings. In so doing, this study poses new questions about group identification and solidarity in the face of often dramatic industrial transformation.

In Chicago's Industrial Decline Robert Lewis charts the city's decline since the 1920s and describes the early development of Chicago's famed (and reviled) growth machine. Beginning in the 1940s and led by local politicians, downtown business interest, financial institutions, and real estate groups, place-dependent organizations in Chicago implemented several industrial renewal initiatives with the dual purpose of stopping factory closings and attracting new firms in order to turn blighted property into modern industrial sites. At the same time, a more powerful coalition sought to adapt the urban fabric to appeal to middle-class consumption and residential living. As Lewis shows, the two aims were never well integrated, and the result was on-going disinvestment and the inexorable decline of Chicago's industrial space. By the 1950s, Lewis argues, it was evident that the early incarnation of the growth machine had failed to maintain Chicago's economic center in industry. Although larger economic and social forces—specifically, competition for business and for residential development from the suburbs in the Chicagoland region and across the whole United States—played a role in the city's industrial decline, Lewis stresses the deep incoherence of post-WWII economic policy and urban planning that hoped to square the circle by supporting both heavy industry and middle- to upper-class amenities in downtown Chicago.

Abandoned factories, shipyards, warehouses, and refineries are features of many industrialized cities around the world. But despite their state of decline, these derelict sites remain vitally connected with the urban landscapes that surround them. In this enlightening new book, Alice Mah explores the experiences of urban decline and post-industrial change in three different community contexts: Niagara Falls, Canada/USA; Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK; and Ivanovo, Russia. Employing a unique methodological approach that combines ethnographic, spatial, and documentary methods, Mah draws on international comparisons of the landscapes and legacies of industrial ruination over the past forty years. Through this, she foregrounds the complex challenges of living with prolonged uncertainty and deprivation amidst socioeconomic change. This rich comparative study makes an essential contribution to far-reaching debates about the decline of manufacturing, regeneration, and identity, and will have important implications for urban theory and policy.

Since the 1970s, the closure of mines, mills, and factories has marked a rupture in working-class lives. The Deindustrialized World interrogates the process of industrial ruination, from the first impact of layoffs in metropolitan cities, suburban areas, and single-industry towns to the shock waves that rippled outward, affecting entire regions, countries, and beyond. Scholars from France, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States share personal stories of ruin and ruination and ask others what it means to be working class in a postindustrial world. Part 1 examines the ruination of former workplaces and the failing health and injured bodies of industrial workers. Part 2 brings to light disparities between rural resource towns and cities, where hipster revitalization often overshadows industrial loss. Part 3 reveals the ongoing impact of deindustrialization on working people and their place in the new global economy. Together, the chapters open a window on the lived experiences of people living at ground zero of deindustrialization, revealing its layered impacts and examining how workers, environmentalists, activists, and the state have responded to its challenges.

Ob Birmingham, Rotterdam oder Wolfsburg: Industriestädte haben nicht nur völlig unterschiedliche Gesichter, sie unterliegen auch einem bemerkenswerten zeitlichen Wandel. Die Autoren behandeln die Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft der Industriestadt als europäisches Phänomen. Aus soziologischer, historischer, geografischer und medialer Perspektive erörtern sie unterschiedliche historische Modelle und Typen von Industriestädten im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, diskutieren die Frage nach der Zukunft von monostrukturellen Industriestädten sowie mediale Repräsentationsformen industrialisierter Städte. Mit Beiträgen vonChristoph Bernhardt, Hans-Peter Dörrenbächer, Simon Gunn, Christine Hannemann, Martina Heßler, Martin Jemelka, Henry Keazor, Robert Lewis, Timo Luks, Rebecca Magdin, Jörg Plöger, Richard Rodger, Rolf Sachsse, Adelheid von Saldern, Ondrej Sevecek, Judith Thissen und Clemens Zimmermann.

Set in the 1980s against a backdrop of the AIDS crisis, deindustrialization and the Reagan era, this book tells the story of one individual's defiant struggle against his community--the city of Kokomo, Indiana. At the same time as teenage AIDS patient Ryan White bravely fought against the intolerance of his hometown to attend public school, one of Kokomo's largest employers, Continental Steel, filed for bankruptcy, significantly raising the stakes of the fight for the city's livelihood and national image. This book tells the story of a fearful time in our recent history, as people in the heartland endured massive layoffs, coped with a lethal new disease and discovered a legacy of toxic waste. Now, some 30 years after Ryan White's death, this book offers a fuller accounting of the challenges that one city reckoned with during this tumultuous period.

The late 1970s and 1980s saw a process of mass factory closures in cities and regions across the Midwest of the United States. What happened next as leaders reacted to the news of each plant closure and to the broader deindustrialization trend that emerged during this time period is the main subject of this book. It shows how leaders in eight metropolitan areas facing deindustrialization strived for adaptive resilience by using economic development policy. The unique attributes of each region - asset bases, modes of governance, civic capacity, leadership qualities, and external factors - influenced the responses employed and the outcomes achieved. Using adaptive resilience as a lens, Margaret Cowell provides a thorough understanding of how and why regions varied in their abilities to respond to deindustrialization.