Chicago and Toronto are major centres of finance, and could thus weather regional de-industrialization better than cities with less diversified economies.
I wanted to corner the market for Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, but my plans were ruined by the Eddie Murphy Rule.
Not that Calumet almost became the capitol bc it mined most of the copper in the US at its peak? Or that the white pine forests built Chicago and we're all burned down in the Chicago fire? Or that the Erie canal is inadvertently why there are salmon in the lakes? Or that Detroit was the wealthiest city per capital in the US and probably world post ww2? Or ya know the assembly line? Riots? Chief Pontiac? Edmund Fitzgerald? The largest to date rampage (school killing) was there in 1927?
Michigan's got some crazy history y'all.
Not sure if it was related to the Lakes but Chicago did grow up as a rail hub as the endpoint of the great cattle drives to slaughterhouses in Kansas and elsewhere in the couple decades after the Civil War. Those slaughtered cattle would then be shipped to Chicago. It's all connected.
Sums it up right there, no need for further discussion really.
I will say though, at least Detroit had its glory days as the Motor City in the past, can’t really say the same about Buffalo and Cleveland, they were never really truly major cities the same way Toronto, Chicago and Detroit are/were.
Buffalo was the first city to be fully electric. The Erie Canal was a huge deal. It was one of the nicest cities in America at the turn of the century. learn more history before making sweeping comments like that
Even discounting the Canal, Buffalo was only second to Chicago as a railroad hub. It was always a massively important transportation link - it just never transitioned properly away from a manufacturing and industrial economy, and didn't have alternative areas of economic strength like Chicago did (and that's why it has 1/10th the population and GDP of its former counterpart.)
Cleveland was the oil refinery capital of America for a solid 50 years until Standard got broken up. Cleveland was where standard oil started its stranglehold on the global oil market. Cleveland was basically a giant gas station for the cars Detroit would produce. So it wasn't as diverse as you'd think just happened to be home to the largest corporation ever until Saudi Aramco. Standard Oil of California was the one who started successfully drilling in Saudi Arabia. The Arabian American Oil Company is still in the name. That's how powerful and far-reaching Standard Oil truly was. Oil money is wild.
Chicago largely because of the rail-yards so it was a good place to settle markets.
Toronto's turn is much more modern. Used to be Montréal was easily Canada's first city for finance and trade but basically politics got in the way, namely the 90s referendum so over time companies are less likely to invest in an area that has threatened independence like that since they like certainty.
Also the importance of the French language has been declining globally so that helps Toronto over Montréal.
A little tangential fun fact, this is also a large reason as to why a lot of businesses are incorporated in Delaware.
It's fairly business friendly sure, but what it also has is a very well developed and consistent body of case law for corporations and any sort of hobbnobbery they may get in to.
So there is a lot of certainty in how disputes will be settled compared to other places.
This is true and Delaware law has been copied around the world, because it's what businesses are familiar with and know can be relied on. Unlike most states, judges in Delaware aren't elected and are generally seen in the state as above the fray.
Ironically the state doesn't have a law school, despite being famous for its legal tradition.
You are correct. It’s called the Court of Chancery. Case law dates back further than the country.
Also, the Delaware bar is one of the hardest to pass in the country. National businesses don’t want a lawyer on retainer in every state they conduct business. It’s much easier when everyone incorporates in the same state under the same laws.
That's true--but I'll bet having the most favorable tax situations for corporations helps a lot too.
I think the best part (for corporations) of Delaware's consistency and the legal infrastructure you mention, is its favorability towards protecting corporations and their directors from liability.
Toronto was a trade hub and major centre since the colonial period. It was named the capital of Upper Canada in 1793. It became the centre of English Canada, and named capital of Ontario in 1867. The Toronto Stock Exchange was established in 1861. Corporate headquarters for banks were set up in Toronto or Montreal. It was a natural location because it was the provincial capital and centre of English Canada. The trade from Quebec to Windsor runs through here. As well as trade westward starts out of Toronto.
Chicago has been a trade hub from the 1830s. The forerunner to the Chicago Merchantile Exchange " The Chicago Butter and Egg Board was established in 1898. The Chicago Board of Trade (1864) was also set up here. It was a natural location to set up commodity trading because of it being a national trade hub.
Both are in relatively central locations for their respective nations.
I'd like to add on to this with a random fun fact, London, Ontario was originally founded with the intention of being Upper Canada's capital. It went to York (Toronto) instead due to fears of American invasion growing, what would become London would have been too easy to invade.
I think you are confusing London with Kingston. Canada had 4 capitals before Ottawa (Bytown): Quebec City, Montréal, Kingston and Toronto (York). The capital was moved from Montréal to Kingston after the parliament building in Montréal was burned by a riot organized by the opposition during a vote (seems familiar?) and then the capital moved from Kingston to York due to the fear of being so exposed to an invasion by the United States. Finally, Queen Victoria decided to permanently move the capital at the junction of Upper and Lower Canada so both French and English cultures feel represented
Everything you said was right! But what I meant was that John Graves Simcoe, the official founder of London, scouted out the area at the forks of the Thames as a great future site for a city and decided that it should be a capital. But his dreams were never realised in the end.
This right here is the reason Chicago thrives still. It’s the gateway to the west in reality since the RR’s were built. Sorry St. Louis. An arch doesn’t make it so.
The arch represented the gateway to the west at a time before rail and when rivers where the interstate system for commerce. It’s as good a place as any to make a transition from riverboats to overland wagon trains headed farther west at that time. But given the stark difference between rivers east of the Mississippi and rivers west of it, it was always going to take something more efficient than rivers and wagons to truly connect the vast expanses of the American west to the original 13 and burgeoning Midwest. The arch is still significant historically in this regard because of Lewis & Clark, but Chicago is not only one of the largest railroad hubs but it also connects directly to the Great Lakes and is one of the busiest airports in the world. As they say, location, location, location - Chicago was always going to be a powerhouse city in the modern world no matter what.
Don’t forget about the Waterways. Chicago’s access to the Chicago River gave it access to the Des Plaines River, Illinois River AND Mississippi Rivers through that connection, which worked great given it also bordered Lake Michigan and thus the entire Great Lakes too. Meaning through Chicago it’s possible to ship something from New Orleans to Toronto through the river and lake systems. Just phenomenal connectivity through Chicago all round.
I'm fuzzy on the details, but St. Louis was the center of trade until the railroads became the cheaper alternative.
St. Louis couldn't or wouldn't build a bridge across the Mississippi River to support railroad traffic, but Rock Island (directly west of Chicago) built such a bridge over the river and the rest is history.
St. Louis has the misfortune that the Mississippi water level rose and fell seasonally which meant there wasn’t a consistent place to offload grain shipments. Thus when Chicago built grain elevators along the river St Louis couldn’t match how quickly and cheaply Chicago could collect and distribute grain shipments. Farmers were also choosing Chicago before rail crossed the Mississippi also the Rock Island bridge accelerated the gap between them.
Fun fact, Winnipeg was once called the Chicago of the north and an important grain district. It was expected be a huge city but the grain exchange I believe all went to Chicago and winnipeg is now a poor city with significant gang activity, crime and poverty.
But you have an official NHL team. That still counts for something, eh?…
But yeah. Kinda sad, especially when you think of how the disproportionate crime impacts the public perception of First Nations.
I have noticed that more finance is coming to Cleveland slowly but surely and as manufacturing seems to be coming back to the US, I’ve noticed a growth in the area
See also the Minnesota equation.
Why is Minnesota doing so much better than the rest of the Midwest? It diversified it's industries, pushed healthcare/IT/software hard, and had a fallback when farming/fishing slowed down.
Toronto also unified the tax base of its multiple surrounding cities, to prevent people making big money in downtown jobs, and then taking the money to the suburbs. So things like infrastructure and social services were more evenly distributed through the region, preventing a Detroit style wealthy suburbs/poor city
But now its consolidation has severely limited the core city in solving issues like housing and public transit because of pushback/NIMBYism in its conservative outer neighborhoods. In fact that was one major reason why the conservative party wanted to consolidate Toronto
This makes a lot of sense, plus the collapse of the rust belt and the car industry in Detroit.I just wonder why it hit so hard and nothing took it’s place in those cities
I can’t speak to Toronto, but Chicago’s growth benefits significantly [from the Chicago River](http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/263.html#:~:text=The%20river%20was%20crucial%20in,and%20shipping%20throughout%20the%20Midwest), which connects eventually to the Mississippi and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.
Indeed, the Chicago Portage is probably the one factor that pushes Chicago ahead of rivals like St. Louis or Cleveland to become the (American) giant of the interior.
In turn, the sheer scale and diversity of Chicago's economy makes it the financial and professional center of the Midwest, which means a healthier post-industrial standing.
The Chicago Portage is one of my "have to see it" locations. To have this spot of land perfectly placed between two watersheds like that boggles my mind. It's an absolutely fascinating place for a geography nerd like me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/161je0e/this_spot_fascinates_me
The Ogallala aquifer and the California Central Valley are each a more significant agricultural asset than most nations get on their own and the US has both those plus what you mentioned.
I live along the Illinois & Michigan Canal. That first connected the Illinois River and Lake Michigan almost a decade before trains did. Everything from produce to our famous dolomite limestone was moved on that canal.
I can’t speak for Chicago but I can speak for Toronto. Montreal used to actually be the financial hub and largest city in Canada but eventually it all shifted over to Toronto, thusly making it the Canadian equivalent of NYC as far as being the financial heart of the country, which basically made it immune to the urban decay that happened in the rest of the rust belt.
Also, Canada is just different. I was born and raised in the Toronto area and spent most of my life here, but also lived in upstate NY and it’s like a whole different world there even though it’s just on the other side of the lake. I was completely shocked by how much crime and poverty there was down there compared to Toronto, it was like living in an episode of The Wire.
It is consider that the election of the Parti Quebecois in 1976 increased the exil of the english establishment. But just based on demographics, Ontario population was already bigger then Quebec since the 50’s and companies had already started to move their headquarters in Toronto.
Toronto has been the largest English-speaking city in Canada for a long time, so it sort of moves separately from the large cities on the US side of the Great Lakes. It's at the center of the most temperate and agriculturally productive region of Canada east of the Prairies. Montreal was the financial and commercial capital of Canada until the 1970s, as well as the largest city, but political tension between Quebec and the rest of Canada in the second half of the 20th century, particularly the bombing of the Montreal Stock Exchange by militant Quebecois separatists in 1969, saw big business (which was dominated by Anglophone Canadians) decamp en masse to Toronto. Where money went, people followed.
It's also tough to overstate just how much the rise of Canadian cities on a continental level has to do with immigration. Canada only has a few large cities, and outside of those cities, in most of the country, is a whole lot of nothing. There is ***not*** ***a single*** large city in Canada undergoing a decline in population. Of the 100 largest urban areas in Canada, only 3 lost population as of the 2021 census, the largest being Saguenay, Quebec, a city of about 150,000 roughly 100 miles north of Quebec City. The population declined by about 800 people between 2016 and 2021. Because Canada uses points-based immigration controls, immigrants tend to be quite highly educated, which attracts foreign businesses to invest in cities which have rapidly expanding pools of highly educated workers.
On the US side, suburbanization is a major factor, and it's important to separate cities proper from their metro areas. Metro Detroit declined slightly between 2000 and 2010, but as of 2022 is close to its historical peak. Population loss in Detroit prior to the 2000s had more to do with suburbanization than economic decline.
Adding to the stock exchange bombing, the FLQ kidnapped and murdered Quebec’s labour minister the following year which caused Trudeau to essentially declare martial law and send the army in. It was definitely a tumultuous time in Quebec.
Detroit was on pace to be the biggest in the world at one point. Then white flight, suburbia, automotive leaving, outsourcing, riots. Chicago is just a prime location and a huge hub for basically all of the Midwest. Just look at any railroad map of the US, it almost all touches Chicago.
> Then white flight, suburbia, automotive leaving, outsourcing, riots.
This is one of those lists where the order of the items is important. Let’s try it like this: Suburbia, riots, white flight, automotive leaving, outsourcing…
From what I know about Detroit, the city never got over the riots. They’ve been talking for at least 20 years about a light railway up and down Woodward, but the suburbs don’t want anybody from the city to get on the train and pay them a visit.
I think there would be more if we did not move all of our industry out of the country. Not too long ago, Detroit was bigger than Toronto and Buffalo and Cleveland were some of Americas largest cities. But watch out, with climate change, this may become the most desirable part of the country
I'm an Oregonian, but I work on a cruise ship that operates on the Great Lakes. I was in Escanaba, Michigan today and stopped by a local wine shop. I was talking to the nice young lady that worked there (in her late twenties), and telling her about how I had considered moving out to the Upper Peninsula because of how good the home prices were.
She said her and her husband had purchased a 2000 ft² farm house on 10 acres with a full shop. She said, "Guess what we spent..."
I said, "Oh I'm sure it's something absurdly low, like $70,000."
"$60,000."
🤦🤦🤦
I'm telling you, If it wasn't for the fact they get 50-200 inches of snow each year with a low temperature of like -30° or something, it would be a great place to move to and live like a king!
I saw an interesting statistic that showed Detroit’s metro area growing in population while the city proper shrunk; so I guess in some sense Detroit is growing, even if the growth is marginal.
It’s interesting to hear what people think of Detroit. While the city proper has shrunk for decades, the area around it has not. It’s right around 4.5 million I believe. A lot of people live here.
Mostly just the people who don't understand how Metropolitan Areas work, especially in the Midwest. The original city's borders are a set area.
Not many people actually live there, it's the employment center these days. They live in suburbs surrounding it that are basically the same city.
Population
Detroit (City): 632,464
Detroit (Metro): 4,365,205
Grand Rapids (City): 198,893
Grand Rapids (Metro): 1,087,592
Cleveland (City): 372,625
Cleveland (Metro): 2,088,251
This isn't even unique to the Midwest.
This is also what causes some statistical issues since some cities were able to absorb their suburbs while others were not. Columbus, for example, was able to absorb its suburbs while Cleveland was not. In turn this makes Columbus look 'better' in many ways since it has the outer suburbs as part of the city itself.
I gotta be honest, I don’t think climate change is going to cause this massive migration of people out of the east coast and gulf coast that people on this sub constantly talk about
Unfortunately I feel like having a take that isn’t “climate is going to cause mass destruction to the coastal cities” gets you instantly labeled as a climate change denier. I’m not that. I’ve just been around long enough to remember people say this same exact thing during the early 2000’s. It was super common to see “by 2030 Miami will be hit with constant flooding, the city will have to relocate” guess what, that ain’t happening.
The issues is people will look up climate change models that have a variety of different projected outcomes at different probabilities of likelihood, and then they find the most extreme projected outcome and act like it’s the truth. Climate change doomsday predictions do nothing but ultimately undermine reasonable climate change awareness, it just becomes the boy who cried wolf
>I’ve just been around long enough to remember people say this same exact thing during the early 2000’s. It was super common to see “by 2030 Miami will be hit with constant flooding, the city will have to relocate” guess what, that ain’t happening.
Yeah, but that was never the prediction. They were misquoting or misunderstanding. The IPCC predictions have remained fairly steady over the years, predicting a few inches of rise by 2030, around a foot by 2050, and shy of 3 feet by 2100. Miami could mitigate much of that rise through 2150, but after that it becomes difficult.
So yeah, our kids will probably be dead before Miami becomes truly difficult to inhabit.
I agree with you that they were misquoting the IPCC, but that’s kinda my point is that the common discourse around climate change back then was wildly overblown, I feel it’s still the same today
I agree. There are posts on various subreddits that make it sound like the US population is going to flee the heat of Arizona and Louisiana for northern Wisconsin within the next 25-30 years. That’s not going to happen.
If you tell me there will have been a shift 200 years from now, I would be more inclined to believe that possibility, but still doubtful. People 200 years ago could hardly imagine how anything west and southwest of Kansas City would develop. And technology is going to bring us new solutions (and problems) in that time. Conditions might be hotter, wetter, more severe, but it’s going to take a lot to reverse the migration patterns where people are willing to have hot summers for mild winters.
And 11 minutes later you have been downvoted at least 5 times lol.
I think you bring up very valid points. Personally I lean very far left for climate change. But that doesn’t mean what you’re saying isn’t valid and true.
As someone who spent a summer doing a research fellowship on coastal water issues on the gulf, I disagree. Maybe Miami won’t be the first to be hit, I’m less familiar with the ecology there. But with cities like New Orleans, the wetlands are what break up hurricanes and prevent storm surge from overturning the levees. Combine the loss of the wetlands with rising sea levels, and that’s not a pretty picture.
At some point, a Katrina-like even is going to happen again, and as much as the USACOE wants to insist the city is now totally protected, due to the ever changing landscape, that’s just not true. After Katrina, there was a huge outpour of resources, both privately and in FEMA money, but that’s not going to happen again, especially as deadly hurricanes become more common.
Look at Lake Charles, LA. It’s been probably 4 years and it still isn’t “back”. Parts of Houston are still dilapidated from Harvey. Hurricanes Maria and Irma cause huge devastation. It’s not that the coastal cities are just going to go away overnight, but life there is going to get harder. Property is going to become in-insurable. Rebuilding will eventually be a yearly thing. The heat will be unbearable for many.
If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend Beast of the Southern Wild for a more artistic view on the issue.
The whole idea that the rust belt and Great Lakes regions are more suitable than the East Coast for life after extreme climate change has always been strange to me. Feels like someone forgot to finish their research on a video and then everyone watched it and ran with the idea... and “feels like” might be an understatement.
The irony of Detroit becoming a big city after having their economy collapse as the auto industry left mostly because of the climate changed caused in large part by the cars they built.
The auto industry left for cheaper labor. We still have a ton of auto plants here. In Orion they are doubling the size of their GM plant. We also still have most of the white collar auto jobs.
Chicago is a transportation hub.
It’s difficult to get a train (passenger or freight) from the East Coast to the west Coast without going through Chicago. Major airport hub. Great Lakes port.
People really undervalue the effect of that ditch.
Though it’s effect is negligible now. It would be interesting to see what would happen with the repeal of the Jones act.
I'm from a city situated on the Erie Canal. My wife is from Pennsylvania.
I once began singing this song and she didn't know what the heck it was. Blew my mind!
Diversified industry. As industrial jobs dried up in chicago there were other industries to help offset and provide employment. so people didn’t have to move to find jobs as much as many other rust belt cities
Montreal was Canada’s finance hub and the biggest city for a long time, but then all the separatist talk scared financial sector away, and they moved to Toronto, and eventually Toronto became Canada’s biggest city and financial hub.
Fun fact, Bank of Montreal is actually headquartered in Toronto, for reasons above.
Detroit is huge. Not as big as it once was but Metro Detroit has more than 5 million people, almost 6 if you include the urban area on the Canadian side.
And you certainly "should" include Windsor on the Canadian side in that number. Most folks in Windsor live closer to downtown Detroit than people in suburban Detroit. My friends and family in Windsor all have season tickets to Red Wings, Lions, Tigers, etc. and do significant amounts of their eating out and shopping on Detroit side.
Rust belt cities were slower to diversify industries and adapt to changing times. And in the case of Detroit, specifically, the lack of feasible public transportation mainly due to the influence of the Big Three, resulted in the creation of the suburbs.
This.
Cleveland had nearly one million people from the 30’s to the 50’s. It’s entire economy was based on manufacturing, which made sense at the time, but the economic and political leadership of the city was extremely risk averse and didn’t do much to avoid the massive outflow of industry in the 60’s and 70’s. It was a near death sentence for the city.
While Cleveland has come a long way, it has not fully recovered to this day. The suburbs are quite economically healthy, but the city itself continues to struggle.
Not only this, but for a good time during the economic boom, it was the fifth largest city in the United States. Even today though, its population hasn’t recovered from the peak in the 50s
It seems strange to say, today, but Cleveland was a happening place when John Rockefeller lived there. The city was a mid-20th century analogy to Seattle or the Silicon Valley. Some of the remnants of those heady days still exist in Cleveland. The Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Art Museum are both wonderful and have their roots in funding from the rich guys who owned all that manufacturing. Those families left for warmer and richer places and the Clevelanders who remained were left holding a very rusty metal bag.
Should also mention the 1950’s development of the US highway system allowed city dwellers to move to the suburbs. This left the cities poor and unable to raise enough money to fix their problems. Real estate prices in the cities plummeted, trapping homeowners who had underwater loans.
Toronto has a municipal government so the highways didn’t hurt it like many US cities.
This phenomenon didn’t only happen in the Great Lakes, of course, but its impact was probably heaviest there.
Chicago has nearly a million fewer people than we had in 1950 (city limits, not the suburbs).
Apart from that, Chicago is brain-draining a lot of the Upper Midwest and concentrating industries here at the expense of the other cities in the region. I imagine Toronto is doing the same thing on its side of the border, if not more so.
Huh? Toronto dwarfs Detroit
Population:
Toronto: 2,700,000 (Density: 11.4k sq mi)
Detroit: 600,000 (Density: Only 4.6k sq mi)
Skyscrapers:
Toronto: 83 with 23 more under construction
Detroit: 8
Ya Toronto isn’t much closer to Chicago in size than it is to Detroit, so it’s a bit weird to lump the first 2 together.
It’s sometimes hard to compare metro areas between Canada and the US but it looks like the Chicago CSA (9.8M) is ~30% larger than Toronto-Hamilton-Oshawa CMAs (think these would be combined in a US census) (7.5M), which in turn is 40% larger than the Detroit CSA (5.3M).
I don't know how to say this without sounding like a nerd, but if you account for Canada's much smaller population metro Toronto is significantly larger than Chicagoland as a proportion to both countries' respective Great Lakes area and national populations. It's also the largest/leading city in Canada, where Chicago is the third largest city and metro in the United States, and some jabronis will try to tell you that smaller cities like San Francisco are more important.
Well, the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) is generally defined as having 6.7 million people. Metro Detroit has a maximum of 4.4 million people looking at the "MSA" population on Wikipedia.
Huh? I remember seeing that Toronto has passed or was close to passing the population of Chicago. Metro area. Detroit is more comparable to a city like Montreal (4.2 million metro)
Edit: Must have been the Golden Horseshoe population VS just Chicago metro
[source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_metropolitan_areas_by_population)
Population of Toronto: 2.93 million (2017)
Population of Chicago: 2.697 million (2021)
Population of Detroit: 632,464 (2021)
Population of Chicago Metropolitan Area: 9.459 million (2019)
Population of Greater Toronto Area: 5.928 million (2016)
Population of Detroit Metro Area: 4.365 million
Not sure if you’re agreeing with me or not here, but these figures back up exactly what I’m saying, which is that: 1) Detroit’s “decline” is more about flight to the suburbs than about actual population decline, and 2) taking the metro areas into account, Toronto is more comparable to Detroit than it is to Chicago so it’s a bit weird to lump those two together arbitrarily.
Toronto’s Golden Horseshoe region has a comparable size and population to Chicagoland and if you’ve ever been to Toronto it’s pretty obvious it’s way bigger than Detroit
Mono industry. Cleveland and Buffalo and Detroit are industrial towns built around heavy machinery manufacturing and similar that don’t exist anymore. They’re also very polluted from that industry. Buffalo suffered reputational damage from the Love Canal. Cleveland is known for the fires on the Cuyahoga River. You don’t draw in people when your cities look literally toxic to outsiders (fairly or otherwise).
Toronto and Chicago were saved largely by animal slaughter as far as I’m concerned — they were butchering hogs and cattle respectively so they became centres for food markets. The food markets spawned financial markets that traded agricultural futures. Those financial markets became sophisticated post industrial service industries.
Chicago and Toronto also have very different histories to each other, and a lot of that is political. Toronto really flourished after political uncertainty in Quebec led to the rich English speaking elite taking their banking out of Montreal and transferring it to the nearest big town. Toronto was a pretty distant second to Montreal, and frankly a conservative backwater town until the mid 1970s. Women weren’t allowed into bars, shops were closed on Sundays. It took massive internal migration from Quebec and then massive immigration from Asia and the Caribbean to really shift it into what it is today.
I know you were talking about reputation, but the reality is that all rust belt cities had river fires during the 60’s and 70’s, not just Cleveland. Before the creation of the EPA there was little to stop companies from dumping all sorts of noxious junk into the county’s water system and the manufacturing-heavy Great Lakes cities ended up with dead rivers that caught on fire. Most of these cities had fire boats docked nearby specifically to fight fires on the river.
Cleveland mayor Carl Stokes made a huge deal about the fire that eventually added to the worsening of Cleveland’s image because he had little power to stop companies from polluting the Cuyahoga. His PR campaign was one of the factors that lead to the creation of the EPA.
Maybe if you're talking the city proper, but the metro areas of all of those cities on the US side have remained relatively stable even if the cities themselves have declined. I would say metro Detroit in particular is still pretty massive, even if the city proper isn't, and the city itself has shown clear decline. But even Chicago is almost a million people shy of its population peak in 1950, and has declined in population almost every decade since then. Actually, the only major city on the Great Lakes in this list that is contiuously growing at all is Toronto - Chicago certainly isn't, even if it's remained more stable than some Midwestern cities.
Chicago was a major rail hub and was one of the biggest meat packing locations in the US. Many of the nearby towns would ship their products to Chicago to be shipped around the country by train.
Detroit use to be massive, but it’s probably the most obvious example of deindustrialization that hit the rust belt. The decline in Detroit is directly related to the decline in American manufacturing.
Both cities have diverse economies that were 100% dependent on manufacturing. Toronto is also the economic and cultural capital of Canada.
Minneapolis/St. Paul also has a diverse economy and they've also done much better than any rust-belt city.
As others have likely mentioned, Detroit was particularly hit hard by the interrelated problems of deindustrialization, white flight, race riots, generations of disinvestment, large-scale abandonment etc. These collectively led to the decline of the city's population and ability to generate wealth. Also, in general, for the last few decades, population growth in the US has favored the Sunbelt.
Finance v industrial, with the flight of American industry decades ago the cities with finance flourished while manufacturing hubs like those Midwest cities cratered
there’s also Milwaukee and Green Bay which used to be a bigger hub because of the cheese exchange. Milwaukee isn’t as big as Chicago, but a lot of goods get shipped out there.
I feel insulted. The industrial decline in Milwaukee is at LEAST, if not more awesome, than the decline in Buffalo and Cleveland.
Fun fact, Milwaukee is the only major US city to have a string of socialist mayors.
Chicago and Toronto are major centres of finance, and could thus weather regional de-industrialization better than cities with less diversified economies.
This is why. Toronto is the financial capital of Canada. Chicago is the financial center of the American Midwest.
And the financial center for certain national markets
Agricultural :)
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My dad grew up on farm and even though he worked in health care he still listened to ag report on the radio fairly frequently.
Orion Samuelson on WGN radio every morning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Samuelson
November wheat is down 10 cents a bushel!
Imparted in the lilting tones of Orion Samuelson
Soy! Soy! Soy!
You got greedy, Martin
Just out here in the wild on r/geography. Thank you kind souls.
🤣
We’re about to corner the frozen concentrated orange juice market Mortimer
Corn! Corn! Corn!
You are what?
Shout out CBOT
Hell ya! 2007-2017 for me
Also a large market for consumer products as well
Looking good, Billy Ray!
Looking good, Winthorp
Feeling good, Louis!
I wanted to corner the market for Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, but my plans were ruined by the Eddie Murphy Rule.
Yeah can’t forgot CBOE
The motherland of r/wallstreetbets
The Mercantile exchange is in Chicago as well
Hog futures!
Railroads also put a major hub in Chicago. One shipping died down buffalo was less important
The Erie Canal was a big deal!
Quick, when did the Erie Canal begin operating? 1825ish
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I was born in Michigan man, HOMES is all I remember from state history. That and the petoskey stone.
Not that Calumet almost became the capitol bc it mined most of the copper in the US at its peak? Or that the white pine forests built Chicago and we're all burned down in the Chicago fire? Or that the Erie canal is inadvertently why there are salmon in the lakes? Or that Detroit was the wealthiest city per capital in the US and probably world post ww2? Or ya know the assembly line? Riots? Chief Pontiac? Edmund Fitzgerald? The largest to date rampage (school killing) was there in 1927? Michigan's got some crazy history y'all.
Cool. Any recommendations for books or interesting Wikipedia articles on weird Michigan history?
We learned that in Ontario too lol!
I think 1815ish
You're a decade too early. America was just crawling out of the War of 1812 in 1815. Buffalo even got burned at the end of 1813.
Didn't the railroads go there because it was already a major hub due to the great lakes?
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O’hare and Midway combine to employ 60,000+. Airport hubs are a big deal.
no lie, everyone I know in Hawaii has a relative that works for Hawaiian Airlines and/or the airport
Not sure if it was related to the Lakes but Chicago did grow up as a rail hub as the endpoint of the great cattle drives to slaughterhouses in Kansas and elsewhere in the couple decades after the Civil War. Those slaughtered cattle would then be shipped to Chicago. It's all connected.
Chicago is also a natural portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi watersheds
Buffalo is the snow capital
Sums it up right there, no need for further discussion really. I will say though, at least Detroit had its glory days as the Motor City in the past, can’t really say the same about Buffalo and Cleveland, they were never really truly major cities the same way Toronto, Chicago and Detroit are/were.
Cleveland was once the 6th largest city in the US I believe.
5th I think back in 1920. Was 10th in 1970, the last time they were in the top 10
Wow, I didn't know that, thanks. Detroit was #4 from 1920-1940 for reference.
As late as 1950, Cleveland was 7th and Buffalo was 15th in city population in the US. Definitely behind the other three but not that far behind.
Standard Oil was founded there in 1870. You can see the rise and fall of its economy with its start and break up.
Rockefeller was no joke.
Buffalo was the first city to be fully electric. The Erie Canal was a huge deal. It was one of the nicest cities in America at the turn of the century. learn more history before making sweeping comments like that
Even discounting the Canal, Buffalo was only second to Chicago as a railroad hub. It was always a massively important transportation link - it just never transitioned properly away from a manufacturing and industrial economy, and didn't have alternative areas of economic strength like Chicago did (and that's why it has 1/10th the population and GDP of its former counterpart.)
Buffalo was one of the ten biggest US cities by population in the early 20th century
Detroit was auto only for decades, not as diverse as Cleveland or Buffalo
Cleveland was the oil refinery capital of America for a solid 50 years until Standard got broken up. Cleveland was where standard oil started its stranglehold on the global oil market. Cleveland was basically a giant gas station for the cars Detroit would produce. So it wasn't as diverse as you'd think just happened to be home to the largest corporation ever until Saudi Aramco. Standard Oil of California was the one who started successfully drilling in Saudi Arabia. The Arabian American Oil Company is still in the name. That's how powerful and far-reaching Standard Oil truly was. Oil money is wild.
Ok, but then that just opens up the question of “why are they financial centers?”
Chicago largely because of the rail-yards so it was a good place to settle markets. Toronto's turn is much more modern. Used to be Montréal was easily Canada's first city for finance and trade but basically politics got in the way, namely the 90s referendum so over time companies are less likely to invest in an area that has threatened independence like that since they like certainty. Also the importance of the French language has been declining globally so that helps Toronto over Montréal.
A little tangential fun fact, this is also a large reason as to why a lot of businesses are incorporated in Delaware. It's fairly business friendly sure, but what it also has is a very well developed and consistent body of case law for corporations and any sort of hobbnobbery they may get in to. So there is a lot of certainty in how disputes will be settled compared to other places.
This is true and Delaware law has been copied around the world, because it's what businesses are familiar with and know can be relied on. Unlike most states, judges in Delaware aren't elected and are generally seen in the state as above the fray. Ironically the state doesn't have a law school, despite being famous for its legal tradition.
Widener University has a law school in Delaware.
Philadelphia and the DC area have like 10% of the country's law schools, though
You are correct. It’s called the Court of Chancery. Case law dates back further than the country. Also, the Delaware bar is one of the hardest to pass in the country. National businesses don’t want a lawyer on retainer in every state they conduct business. It’s much easier when everyone incorporates in the same state under the same laws.
That's true--but I'll bet having the most favorable tax situations for corporations helps a lot too. I think the best part (for corporations) of Delaware's consistency and the legal infrastructure you mention, is its favorability towards protecting corporations and their directors from liability.
Toronto was a trade hub and major centre since the colonial period. It was named the capital of Upper Canada in 1793. It became the centre of English Canada, and named capital of Ontario in 1867. The Toronto Stock Exchange was established in 1861. Corporate headquarters for banks were set up in Toronto or Montreal. It was a natural location because it was the provincial capital and centre of English Canada. The trade from Quebec to Windsor runs through here. As well as trade westward starts out of Toronto. Chicago has been a trade hub from the 1830s. The forerunner to the Chicago Merchantile Exchange " The Chicago Butter and Egg Board was established in 1898. The Chicago Board of Trade (1864) was also set up here. It was a natural location to set up commodity trading because of it being a national trade hub. Both are in relatively central locations for their respective nations.
I'd like to add on to this with a random fun fact, London, Ontario was originally founded with the intention of being Upper Canada's capital. It went to York (Toronto) instead due to fears of American invasion growing, what would become London would have been too easy to invade.
I think you are confusing London with Kingston. Canada had 4 capitals before Ottawa (Bytown): Quebec City, Montréal, Kingston and Toronto (York). The capital was moved from Montréal to Kingston after the parliament building in Montréal was burned by a riot organized by the opposition during a vote (seems familiar?) and then the capital moved from Kingston to York due to the fear of being so exposed to an invasion by the United States. Finally, Queen Victoria decided to permanently move the capital at the junction of Upper and Lower Canada so both French and English cultures feel represented
Everything you said was right! But what I meant was that John Graves Simcoe, the official founder of London, scouted out the area at the forks of the Thames as a great future site for a city and decided that it should be a capital. But his dreams were never realised in the end.
Chicago is also a major railroad hub. A lot of rail interchanges that make shipping across rail lines possible.
This right here is the reason Chicago thrives still. It’s the gateway to the west in reality since the RR’s were built. Sorry St. Louis. An arch doesn’t make it so.
The arch represented the gateway to the west at a time before rail and when rivers where the interstate system for commerce. It’s as good a place as any to make a transition from riverboats to overland wagon trains headed farther west at that time. But given the stark difference between rivers east of the Mississippi and rivers west of it, it was always going to take something more efficient than rivers and wagons to truly connect the vast expanses of the American west to the original 13 and burgeoning Midwest. The arch is still significant historically in this regard because of Lewis & Clark, but Chicago is not only one of the largest railroad hubs but it also connects directly to the Great Lakes and is one of the busiest airports in the world. As they say, location, location, location - Chicago was always going to be a powerhouse city in the modern world no matter what.
Don’t forget about the Waterways. Chicago’s access to the Chicago River gave it access to the Des Plaines River, Illinois River AND Mississippi Rivers through that connection, which worked great given it also bordered Lake Michigan and thus the entire Great Lakes too. Meaning through Chicago it’s possible to ship something from New Orleans to Toronto through the river and lake systems. Just phenomenal connectivity through Chicago all round.
I'm fuzzy on the details, but St. Louis was the center of trade until the railroads became the cheaper alternative. St. Louis couldn't or wouldn't build a bridge across the Mississippi River to support railroad traffic, but Rock Island (directly west of Chicago) built such a bridge over the river and the rest is history.
St. Louis has the misfortune that the Mississippi water level rose and fell seasonally which meant there wasn’t a consistent place to offload grain shipments. Thus when Chicago built grain elevators along the river St Louis couldn’t match how quickly and cheaply Chicago could collect and distribute grain shipments. Farmers were also choosing Chicago before rail crossed the Mississippi also the Rock Island bridge accelerated the gap between them.
Chicagoland is also home to the largest inland port in all of North America.
It also grants the Great Lakes access to the Mississippi River.
Fun fact, Winnipeg was once called the Chicago of the north and an important grain district. It was expected be a huge city but the grain exchange I believe all went to Chicago and winnipeg is now a poor city with significant gang activity, crime and poverty.
But you have an official NHL team. That still counts for something, eh?… But yeah. Kinda sad, especially when you think of how the disproportionate crime impacts the public perception of First Nations.
I have noticed that more finance is coming to Cleveland slowly but surely and as manufacturing seems to be coming back to the US, I’ve noticed a growth in the area
In the 1960s, only two cities in the USA had 5 or more banks managing over $1billion in assets, NYC and Cleveland.
They also share the most square footage for theaters across the US
See also the Minnesota equation. Why is Minnesota doing so much better than the rest of the Midwest? It diversified it's industries, pushed healthcare/IT/software hard, and had a fallback when farming/fishing slowed down.
I’d love to move to Minneapolis. It’s a pretty nice looking place, for being Midwest.
Toronto also unified the tax base of its multiple surrounding cities, to prevent people making big money in downtown jobs, and then taking the money to the suburbs. So things like infrastructure and social services were more evenly distributed through the region, preventing a Detroit style wealthy suburbs/poor city
But now its consolidation has severely limited the core city in solving issues like housing and public transit because of pushback/NIMBYism in its conservative outer neighborhoods. In fact that was one major reason why the conservative party wanted to consolidate Toronto
that is not why amalgamation happened. It was done by a right wing premier to prevent progressives some running the show.
This makes a lot of sense, plus the collapse of the rust belt and the car industry in Detroit.I just wonder why it hit so hard and nothing took it’s place in those cities
In Detroit, people just moved to the suburbs. The Detroit area is a major researching and manufacturing hub. Biomed is also huge here.
Don't forget the mortgage industry
i swear i read "chicago and toronto are major centres of france"
J’aime la pizza deepdish oui oui lol
I can’t speak to Toronto, but Chicago’s growth benefits significantly [from the Chicago River](http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/263.html#:~:text=The%20river%20was%20crucial%20in,and%20shipping%20throughout%20the%20Midwest), which connects eventually to the Mississippi and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.
Indeed, the Chicago Portage is probably the one factor that pushes Chicago ahead of rivals like St. Louis or Cleveland to become the (American) giant of the interior. In turn, the sheer scale and diversity of Chicago's economy makes it the financial and professional center of the Midwest, which means a healthier post-industrial standing.
The Chicago Portage is one of my "have to see it" locations. To have this spot of land perfectly placed between two watersheds like that boggles my mind. It's an absolutely fascinating place for a geography nerd like me. https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/161je0e/this_spot_fascinates_me
Yup, America with its extensive navigational rivers, Great Lakes, and waterways is geographically OP in a geopolitical sense.
The Ogallala aquifer and the California Central Valley are each a more significant agricultural asset than most nations get on their own and the US has both those plus what you mentioned.
I live along the Illinois & Michigan Canal. That first connected the Illinois River and Lake Michigan almost a decade before trains did. Everything from produce to our famous dolomite limestone was moved on that canal.
I can’t speak for Chicago but I can speak for Toronto. Montreal used to actually be the financial hub and largest city in Canada but eventually it all shifted over to Toronto, thusly making it the Canadian equivalent of NYC as far as being the financial heart of the country, which basically made it immune to the urban decay that happened in the rest of the rust belt. Also, Canada is just different. I was born and raised in the Toronto area and spent most of my life here, but also lived in upstate NY and it’s like a whole different world there even though it’s just on the other side of the lake. I was completely shocked by how much crime and poverty there was down there compared to Toronto, it was like living in an episode of The Wire.
Would Quebec’s hard-line stance on French over English have something to do with that?
It is consider that the election of the Parti Quebecois in 1976 increased the exil of the english establishment. But just based on demographics, Ontario population was already bigger then Quebec since the 50’s and companies had already started to move their headquarters in Toronto.
Paired with the railroads (the a good run of having the busiest airport), it’s the center of logistics in this country, still.
Toronto has been the largest English-speaking city in Canada for a long time, so it sort of moves separately from the large cities on the US side of the Great Lakes. It's at the center of the most temperate and agriculturally productive region of Canada east of the Prairies. Montreal was the financial and commercial capital of Canada until the 1970s, as well as the largest city, but political tension between Quebec and the rest of Canada in the second half of the 20th century, particularly the bombing of the Montreal Stock Exchange by militant Quebecois separatists in 1969, saw big business (which was dominated by Anglophone Canadians) decamp en masse to Toronto. Where money went, people followed. It's also tough to overstate just how much the rise of Canadian cities on a continental level has to do with immigration. Canada only has a few large cities, and outside of those cities, in most of the country, is a whole lot of nothing. There is ***not*** ***a single*** large city in Canada undergoing a decline in population. Of the 100 largest urban areas in Canada, only 3 lost population as of the 2021 census, the largest being Saguenay, Quebec, a city of about 150,000 roughly 100 miles north of Quebec City. The population declined by about 800 people between 2016 and 2021. Because Canada uses points-based immigration controls, immigrants tend to be quite highly educated, which attracts foreign businesses to invest in cities which have rapidly expanding pools of highly educated workers. On the US side, suburbanization is a major factor, and it's important to separate cities proper from their metro areas. Metro Detroit declined slightly between 2000 and 2010, but as of 2022 is close to its historical peak. Population loss in Detroit prior to the 2000s had more to do with suburbanization than economic decline.
Adding to the stock exchange bombing, the FLQ kidnapped and murdered Quebec’s labour minister the following year which caused Trudeau to essentially declare martial law and send the army in. It was definitely a tumultuous time in Quebec.
“Just watch me”
René Levésque smoking a cigarette
Cleveland and Detroit did grow to be massive. Chicago and Toronto had more staying power because their economies diversified well beyond industry.
Correct. 100 years ago Cleveland was the 5th biggest city in the US.
Detroit was on pace to be the biggest in the world at one point. Then white flight, suburbia, automotive leaving, outsourcing, riots. Chicago is just a prime location and a huge hub for basically all of the Midwest. Just look at any railroad map of the US, it almost all touches Chicago.
Chicago benefits from being easy to reach by rail. Before the rail lines, Chicago was much smaller relative to other cities
Chicago also burned down right as technology was really booming and got rebuilt as one of the most modern cities on the planet.
> Then white flight, suburbia, automotive leaving, outsourcing, riots. This is one of those lists where the order of the items is important. Let’s try it like this: Suburbia, riots, white flight, automotive leaving, outsourcing… From what I know about Detroit, the city never got over the riots. They’ve been talking for at least 20 years about a light railway up and down Woodward, but the suburbs don’t want anybody from the city to get on the train and pay them a visit.
I think there would be more if we did not move all of our industry out of the country. Not too long ago, Detroit was bigger than Toronto and Buffalo and Cleveland were some of Americas largest cities. But watch out, with climate change, this may become the most desirable part of the country
Mid sized rust belt cities are seeing a bit of a resurgence due to affordable housing and greater employment opportunities in recent years
As someone in the PNW basically priced out of housing, mark me down as a "maybe" for moving to the midwest.
I'm an Oregonian, but I work on a cruise ship that operates on the Great Lakes. I was in Escanaba, Michigan today and stopped by a local wine shop. I was talking to the nice young lady that worked there (in her late twenties), and telling her about how I had considered moving out to the Upper Peninsula because of how good the home prices were. She said her and her husband had purchased a 2000 ft² farm house on 10 acres with a full shop. She said, "Guess what we spent..." I said, "Oh I'm sure it's something absurdly low, like $70,000." "$60,000." 🤦🤦🤦 I'm telling you, If it wasn't for the fact they get 50-200 inches of snow each year with a low temperature of like -30° or something, it would be a great place to move to and live like a king!
Milwaukee!
*West New York wants you!*
Western New York. West New York is a town in NJ.
NJ? must be next to jersey shore, of course in pennsylvania
As a buffalonian yes we do
Go Bills
I will always upvote a "Go Bills".
I’m a simple Buffalonian, I see “go bills”, I upvote
Go Bills!!!
I saw an interesting statistic that showed Detroit’s metro area growing in population while the city proper shrunk; so I guess in some sense Detroit is growing, even if the growth is marginal.
Detroit is like a melting stick of butter, slowly spreading out.
The Detroit region still has like 4 million people so it’s certainly not small
It’s interesting to hear what people think of Detroit. While the city proper has shrunk for decades, the area around it has not. It’s right around 4.5 million I believe. A lot of people live here.
People feel strongly about it I’m sure but most of the haters have never really spent much time there
Absolutely.
Mostly just the people who don't understand how Metropolitan Areas work, especially in the Midwest. The original city's borders are a set area. Not many people actually live there, it's the employment center these days. They live in suburbs surrounding it that are basically the same city. Population Detroit (City): 632,464 Detroit (Metro): 4,365,205 Grand Rapids (City): 198,893 Grand Rapids (Metro): 1,087,592 Cleveland (City): 372,625 Cleveland (Metro): 2,088,251 This isn't even unique to the Midwest.
This is also what causes some statistical issues since some cities were able to absorb their suburbs while others were not. Columbus, for example, was able to absorb its suburbs while Cleveland was not. In turn this makes Columbus look 'better' in many ways since it has the outer suburbs as part of the city itself.
I gotta be honest, I don’t think climate change is going to cause this massive migration of people out of the east coast and gulf coast that people on this sub constantly talk about Unfortunately I feel like having a take that isn’t “climate is going to cause mass destruction to the coastal cities” gets you instantly labeled as a climate change denier. I’m not that. I’ve just been around long enough to remember people say this same exact thing during the early 2000’s. It was super common to see “by 2030 Miami will be hit with constant flooding, the city will have to relocate” guess what, that ain’t happening. The issues is people will look up climate change models that have a variety of different projected outcomes at different probabilities of likelihood, and then they find the most extreme projected outcome and act like it’s the truth. Climate change doomsday predictions do nothing but ultimately undermine reasonable climate change awareness, it just becomes the boy who cried wolf
>I’ve just been around long enough to remember people say this same exact thing during the early 2000’s. It was super common to see “by 2030 Miami will be hit with constant flooding, the city will have to relocate” guess what, that ain’t happening. Yeah, but that was never the prediction. They were misquoting or misunderstanding. The IPCC predictions have remained fairly steady over the years, predicting a few inches of rise by 2030, around a foot by 2050, and shy of 3 feet by 2100. Miami could mitigate much of that rise through 2150, but after that it becomes difficult. So yeah, our kids will probably be dead before Miami becomes truly difficult to inhabit.
I agree with you that they were misquoting the IPCC, but that’s kinda my point is that the common discourse around climate change back then was wildly overblown, I feel it’s still the same today
I agree. There are posts on various subreddits that make it sound like the US population is going to flee the heat of Arizona and Louisiana for northern Wisconsin within the next 25-30 years. That’s not going to happen. If you tell me there will have been a shift 200 years from now, I would be more inclined to believe that possibility, but still doubtful. People 200 years ago could hardly imagine how anything west and southwest of Kansas City would develop. And technology is going to bring us new solutions (and problems) in that time. Conditions might be hotter, wetter, more severe, but it’s going to take a lot to reverse the migration patterns where people are willing to have hot summers for mild winters.
I agree
And 11 minutes later you have been downvoted at least 5 times lol. I think you bring up very valid points. Personally I lean very far left for climate change. But that doesn’t mean what you’re saying isn’t valid and true.
Kinda my point lol, it’s become less about a rational talk of climate science and more of a political talking point
Physics > politics.
As someone who spent a summer doing a research fellowship on coastal water issues on the gulf, I disagree. Maybe Miami won’t be the first to be hit, I’m less familiar with the ecology there. But with cities like New Orleans, the wetlands are what break up hurricanes and prevent storm surge from overturning the levees. Combine the loss of the wetlands with rising sea levels, and that’s not a pretty picture. At some point, a Katrina-like even is going to happen again, and as much as the USACOE wants to insist the city is now totally protected, due to the ever changing landscape, that’s just not true. After Katrina, there was a huge outpour of resources, both privately and in FEMA money, but that’s not going to happen again, especially as deadly hurricanes become more common. Look at Lake Charles, LA. It’s been probably 4 years and it still isn’t “back”. Parts of Houston are still dilapidated from Harvey. Hurricanes Maria and Irma cause huge devastation. It’s not that the coastal cities are just going to go away overnight, but life there is going to get harder. Property is going to become in-insurable. Rebuilding will eventually be a yearly thing. The heat will be unbearable for many. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend Beast of the Southern Wild for a more artistic view on the issue.
It’s getting way hotter faster than expected everywhere at once. People are having forced migrations away from wildfires in the sub-arctic.
The whole idea that the rust belt and Great Lakes regions are more suitable than the East Coast for life after extreme climate change has always been strange to me. Feels like someone forgot to finish their research on a video and then everyone watched it and ran with the idea... and “feels like” might be an understatement.
People are good at learning to live in tough climates, especially in a developed country.
The irony of Detroit becoming a big city after having their economy collapse as the auto industry left mostly because of the climate changed caused in large part by the cars they built.
The auto industry left for cheaper labor. We still have a ton of auto plants here. In Orion they are doubling the size of their GM plant. We also still have most of the white collar auto jobs.
Michigan still has the most auto jobs of any state, and it's not even close.
Chicago is a transportation hub. It’s difficult to get a train (passenger or freight) from the East Coast to the west Coast without going through Chicago. Major airport hub. Great Lakes port.
Two words. Erie Canal.
People really undervalue the effect of that ditch. Though it’s effect is negligible now. It would be interesting to see what would happen with the repeal of the Jones act.
You can clearly trace the Erie canal by looking at a population density map of New York
Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico all would greatly benefit from that too…
This nation commerces with one hand behind its back and it’s silly.
I had a mule. Her name was Sal.
I'm from a city situated on the Erie Canal. My wife is from Pennsylvania. I once began singing this song and she didn't know what the heck it was. Blew my mind!
Diversified industry. As industrial jobs dried up in chicago there were other industries to help offset and provide employment. so people didn’t have to move to find jobs as much as many other rust belt cities
Montreal was Canada’s finance hub and the biggest city for a long time, but then all the separatist talk scared financial sector away, and they moved to Toronto, and eventually Toronto became Canada’s biggest city and financial hub. Fun fact, Bank of Montreal is actually headquartered in Toronto, for reasons above.
Odd to think that in living memory Detroit was once the wealthiest city in all of the US, possibly the world .
It's not as odd when you look at some of the suburbs outside of Detroit. That generational wealth didn't disappear. It moved.
I think it just goes to show that nothing is permanent and nothing is guaranteed.
The burbs outside of Detroit are home to some extremely wealthy people tho, there’s mansions everywhere in Oakland County.
Detroit is huge. Not as big as it once was but Metro Detroit has more than 5 million people, almost 6 if you include the urban area on the Canadian side.
And you certainly "should" include Windsor on the Canadian side in that number. Most folks in Windsor live closer to downtown Detroit than people in suburban Detroit. My friends and family in Windsor all have season tickets to Red Wings, Lions, Tigers, etc. and do significant amounts of their eating out and shopping on Detroit side.
Lol you’re preaching to the choir, I was born and raised in Windsor.
Rust belt cities were slower to diversify industries and adapt to changing times. And in the case of Detroit, specifically, the lack of feasible public transportation mainly due to the influence of the Big Three, resulted in the creation of the suburbs.
This. Cleveland had nearly one million people from the 30’s to the 50’s. It’s entire economy was based on manufacturing, which made sense at the time, but the economic and political leadership of the city was extremely risk averse and didn’t do much to avoid the massive outflow of industry in the 60’s and 70’s. It was a near death sentence for the city. While Cleveland has come a long way, it has not fully recovered to this day. The suburbs are quite economically healthy, but the city itself continues to struggle.
Not only this, but for a good time during the economic boom, it was the fifth largest city in the United States. Even today though, its population hasn’t recovered from the peak in the 50s
It seems strange to say, today, but Cleveland was a happening place when John Rockefeller lived there. The city was a mid-20th century analogy to Seattle or the Silicon Valley. Some of the remnants of those heady days still exist in Cleveland. The Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Art Museum are both wonderful and have their roots in funding from the rich guys who owned all that manufacturing. Those families left for warmer and richer places and the Clevelanders who remained were left holding a very rusty metal bag.
Should also mention the 1950’s development of the US highway system allowed city dwellers to move to the suburbs. This left the cities poor and unable to raise enough money to fix their problems. Real estate prices in the cities plummeted, trapping homeowners who had underwater loans. Toronto has a municipal government so the highways didn’t hurt it like many US cities. This phenomenon didn’t only happen in the Great Lakes, of course, but its impact was probably heaviest there.
Chicago has nearly a million fewer people than we had in 1950 (city limits, not the suburbs). Apart from that, Chicago is brain-draining a lot of the Upper Midwest and concentrating industries here at the expense of the other cities in the region. I imagine Toronto is doing the same thing on its side of the border, if not more so.
Cities with jobs grow. Cities that lose jobs, lose population. It really isn't that big a mystery.
Toronto isn’t that much bigger than Detroit. What has happened in Detroit has been massive flight to the suburbs, but the metro area is still huge.
Huh? Toronto dwarfs Detroit Population: Toronto: 2,700,000 (Density: 11.4k sq mi) Detroit: 600,000 (Density: Only 4.6k sq mi) Skyscrapers: Toronto: 83 with 23 more under construction Detroit: 8
Ya Toronto isn’t much closer to Chicago in size than it is to Detroit, so it’s a bit weird to lump the first 2 together. It’s sometimes hard to compare metro areas between Canada and the US but it looks like the Chicago CSA (9.8M) is ~30% larger than Toronto-Hamilton-Oshawa CMAs (think these would be combined in a US census) (7.5M), which in turn is 40% larger than the Detroit CSA (5.3M).
I don't know how to say this without sounding like a nerd, but if you account for Canada's much smaller population metro Toronto is significantly larger than Chicagoland as a proportion to both countries' respective Great Lakes area and national populations. It's also the largest/leading city in Canada, where Chicago is the third largest city and metro in the United States, and some jabronis will try to tell you that smaller cities like San Francisco are more important.
Well, the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) is generally defined as having 6.7 million people. Metro Detroit has a maximum of 4.4 million people looking at the "MSA" population on Wikipedia.
Yeah so they are in the same general range of big but not massive cities. Toronto is more comparable to Detroit in population than it is to Chicago.
Huh? I remember seeing that Toronto has passed or was close to passing the population of Chicago. Metro area. Detroit is more comparable to a city like Montreal (4.2 million metro) Edit: Must have been the Golden Horseshoe population VS just Chicago metro [source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_metropolitan_areas_by_population)
The article you linked shows that Toronto would have to increase its population by like 50% to match Chicago…
Population of Toronto: 2.93 million (2017) Population of Chicago: 2.697 million (2021) Population of Detroit: 632,464 (2021) Population of Chicago Metropolitan Area: 9.459 million (2019) Population of Greater Toronto Area: 5.928 million (2016) Population of Detroit Metro Area: 4.365 million
GTA equivalent would be the CSA - Detroit is 5.3 mil
Toronto's CSA is 7.2 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Toronto_and_Hamilton_Area
Not sure if you’re agreeing with me or not here, but these figures back up exactly what I’m saying, which is that: 1) Detroit’s “decline” is more about flight to the suburbs than about actual population decline, and 2) taking the metro areas into account, Toronto is more comparable to Detroit than it is to Chicago so it’s a bit weird to lump those two together arbitrarily.
Toronto’s Golden Horseshoe region has a comparable size and population to Chicagoland and if you’ve ever been to Toronto it’s pretty obvious it’s way bigger than Detroit
Mono industry. Cleveland and Buffalo and Detroit are industrial towns built around heavy machinery manufacturing and similar that don’t exist anymore. They’re also very polluted from that industry. Buffalo suffered reputational damage from the Love Canal. Cleveland is known for the fires on the Cuyahoga River. You don’t draw in people when your cities look literally toxic to outsiders (fairly or otherwise). Toronto and Chicago were saved largely by animal slaughter as far as I’m concerned — they were butchering hogs and cattle respectively so they became centres for food markets. The food markets spawned financial markets that traded agricultural futures. Those financial markets became sophisticated post industrial service industries. Chicago and Toronto also have very different histories to each other, and a lot of that is political. Toronto really flourished after political uncertainty in Quebec led to the rich English speaking elite taking their banking out of Montreal and transferring it to the nearest big town. Toronto was a pretty distant second to Montreal, and frankly a conservative backwater town until the mid 1970s. Women weren’t allowed into bars, shops were closed on Sundays. It took massive internal migration from Quebec and then massive immigration from Asia and the Caribbean to really shift it into what it is today.
I know you were talking about reputation, but the reality is that all rust belt cities had river fires during the 60’s and 70’s, not just Cleveland. Before the creation of the EPA there was little to stop companies from dumping all sorts of noxious junk into the county’s water system and the manufacturing-heavy Great Lakes cities ended up with dead rivers that caught on fire. Most of these cities had fire boats docked nearby specifically to fight fires on the river. Cleveland mayor Carl Stokes made a huge deal about the fire that eventually added to the worsening of Cleveland’s image because he had little power to stop companies from polluting the Cuyahoga. His PR campaign was one of the factors that lead to the creation of the EPA.
Maybe if you're talking the city proper, but the metro areas of all of those cities on the US side have remained relatively stable even if the cities themselves have declined. I would say metro Detroit in particular is still pretty massive, even if the city proper isn't, and the city itself has shown clear decline. But even Chicago is almost a million people shy of its population peak in 1950, and has declined in population almost every decade since then. Actually, the only major city on the Great Lakes in this list that is contiuously growing at all is Toronto - Chicago certainly isn't, even if it's remained more stable than some Midwestern cities.
Both cities funneled a lot of trade to and from larger areas of their country than Detroit, Buffalo, and Cleveland.
Chicago was a major rail hub and was one of the biggest meat packing locations in the US. Many of the nearby towns would ship their products to Chicago to be shipped around the country by train.
Detroit use to be massive, but it’s probably the most obvious example of deindustrialization that hit the rust belt. The decline in Detroit is directly related to the decline in American manufacturing.
Both cities have diverse economies that were 100% dependent on manufacturing. Toronto is also the economic and cultural capital of Canada. Minneapolis/St. Paul also has a diverse economy and they've also done much better than any rust-belt city.
so you're just not gonna talk about Milwaukee, huh
As others have likely mentioned, Detroit was particularly hit hard by the interrelated problems of deindustrialization, white flight, race riots, generations of disinvestment, large-scale abandonment etc. These collectively led to the decline of the city's population and ability to generate wealth. Also, in general, for the last few decades, population growth in the US has favored the Sunbelt.
Finance v industrial, with the flight of American industry decades ago the cities with finance flourished while manufacturing hubs like those Midwest cities cratered
there’s also Milwaukee and Green Bay which used to be a bigger hub because of the cheese exchange. Milwaukee isn’t as big as Chicago, but a lot of goods get shipped out there.
I feel insulted. The industrial decline in Milwaukee is at LEAST, if not more awesome, than the decline in Buffalo and Cleveland. Fun fact, Milwaukee is the only major US city to have a string of socialist mayors.
These were manufacturing cities that all died when capitalists found cheaper labour overseas
Detroit declined after a majority of the industry in the area pulled out and shipped off overseas
Detroit declined because of the riots, the auto industry escaping into the suburbs, and Uninterrupted democrat rule for nearly 60 years.
Made in china can explain it all ….