Rust Belt - Inland Cities
Cleveland was the largest of the Lake Erie port cities. Cleveland's initial growth was stimulated by a canal connecting the narrow and winding Cuyahoga River with a tributary of the Ohio River. Although the city quickly outgrew this small initial advantage, it was enough to give Cleveland a head start on its nearby urban competitors. The diverse industrial base that resulted took advantage of the accessibility offered by the lakes and by the major east-west railroads connecting New York with Chicago and the Agricultural Core to the west. Cleveland's growth also spilled over into adjacent ports, such as Lorain, Ashtabula, and Conneaut, Ohio, and perhaps as far east as Erie, Pennsylvania, and as far west as Toledo, Ohio, as well as to complementary growth centers inland, such as the rubber-producing city of Akron, Ohio.
Buffalo, New York, is located at the eastern end of Lake Erie. Wheat from the Plains states is brought to the western Great Lakes and carried in bulk to Buffalo for refining. The same factors that generated steel and metals manufacturing elsewhere along the lakeshore helped ensure that a significant portion of the city's manufacturing would be connected to this type of industry. The harnessing of nearby Niagara Falls for hydroelectric power attracted chemical and aluminum industries.
The city on the narrow water passage between Lakes Huron and Erie, Detroit, grew rapidly only early in the 20th century because it is located more than 80 kilometers north of the primary New York-Chicago rail connection. It was not until the rise of the industry that fostered the railroads' chief land transport competitor--motor vehicles--that Detroit developed the character for which it is best known. The most successful automobile manufacturers concentrated in Detroit and nearby cities, and the demand for automobiles skyrocketed, drawing a variety of component suppliers to southeastern Michigan. The smaller of the two remaining metropolitan centers along the southern Great Lakes margin is Milwaukee. In addition to its industrial mix of heavy industry and motor vehicle manufacturing, Milwaukee is one of the leading centers of the brewing industry, a result of the large number of German immigrants who settled in Wisconsin during the late 19th century. A significant food processing industry is also present in Milwaukee, because it is a major focus for the middle Dairy Belt of the state.
Chicago is easily the dominant city of the interior Manufacturing Core. So important did this city become that, for many years it was called the "Second City," recognizing Chicago's population (2,725,979 in 1990) as second only to that of New York City. Although Los Angeles now outranks Chicago in population, the informal "capital" of the Midwest persists as the strongest urban focus of the United States' interior.
Located along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago occupies the optimum location for the transfer of people and goods between lake transportation and the rich agricultural region to the west and southwest. The Illinois and Michigan Canal, located in part through the heart of the city, was completed in 1848 to link the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River system. Four years later, Chicago was connected to New York by rail and became the primary regional rail focus in the Midwest.
Chicago absorbed thousands of immigrants throughout the later 19th century and spawned a radial network of rail lines into Illinois, Wisconsin, and the agricultural states beyond. Meatpacking developed around the city's large stockyards. Other industries, such as furniture and clothing manufacturers, located there to take advantage of the growing local market and good access to markets farther west. After the turn of the century, the steel industry was introduced to the Chicago region, south of the city itself but still along the lakeshore in Illinois and Indiana and easily accessible to the city's unparalleled railroad network.
Already a city of 1 million by 1890, Chicago doubled in size before 1910 and exceeded 3 million by the mid-1920s. The volume of Chicago's manufacturing activities today is matched only by the immense diversity of products manufactured, making the city at least partly an effective regional counterbalance to the intense economic nodes in Megalopolis.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
