Remaking the Rust Belt: The Postindustrial Transformation of North America by Tracy Neumann

Abstract

Reviewed by: Remaking the Rust Belt: The Postindustrial Transformation of North America by Tracy Neumann Anthony Pratcher II Remaking the Rust Belt: The Postindustrial Transformation of North America. By Tracy Neumann. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 270 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. Cloth, $49.95; paper, $24.95.) The descriptive term "Rust Belt," similar to "Sun Belt," "Bible Belt," or "Black Belt," often fails to embody the analytic rigor scholars strive for in their research. But Tracy Neumann, through her transnational comparison of postindustrial urban politics in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Hamilton, Ontario, turns the Rust Belt into a political orientation as opposed to a spatial location. In both cities, civic leaders and elected officials realized privatization was necessary to combat the capital mobility that a postindustrial economy encouraged. Neumann argues, however, that community leaders in Hamilton could not emulate policies implemented in Pittsburgh due to local conditions that distinguished these steel towns. In Pittsburgh, federal and state encouragement for public/private partnerships helped sustain civic involvement from institutional leaders and local philanthropists even as industrial operations declined in western Pennsylvania. Civic elites encouraged a "Pittsburgh Renaissance" that attracted white-collar residents through cultural amenities, environmental improvements, and diversified employment, but these plans were put into practice through the exclusion of small property owners, labor activists, and racial minorities from planning and development. On the other hand, Neumann finds, Canadian policies prioritized collective gains over individual profit, and community leaders in Hamilton had to organize those actors systemically excluded from planning regional redevelopment in Pittsburgh. Neumann concludes that the cultural homogeneity of western Ontario flattened relations among civic actors so that public/private collaboration occurred on an ad hoc basis. The greatest contrast in Hamilton [End Page 229] was the spatial divide between the urban community and the surrounding rural hinterland; the greatest distinction in Pittsburgh was social divide between civic elites and grassroots activists. The first three chapters explore how Pittsburgh officials sought mechanisms to attract taxpayers—which they understood to be white professionals—into the city. Corporate managers encouraged politicians to divert limited public resources to community power brokers targeted for private investment even as public service provisions were limited in communities identified for deindustrialization. In Pittsburgh, elected officials such as long-time mayor Pete Flaherty assuaged anxieties of less affluent voters while instituting austerity policies that heightened economic precarity. In contrast, Canadian unions wrested concessions from steel manufacturers and remained more politically influential than their American counterparts. While the inclusion of labor leaders minimized popular resistance to redevelopment, the Canadian government offered less support for neoliberal recalibration than did their American counterparts. The final three chapters explore how successful transitions to postindustrial economies required redevelopment practices more commonly associated with Sun Belt communities. While Hamilton was not able to modify its industrial urban landscape, downtown Pittsburgh was redesigned to serve local corporate managers and to attract white-collar colleagues. To do so, planners largely ignored the needs of working-class residents except when attached to development plans. Some neighborhoods on Pittsburgh's South Side were revitalized due to non-elite residents, but investors sought to develop properties and attract businesses that catered to the cultural needs of white-collar residents. In Hamilton, planners sought to shelter working-class communities from downsides of development like gentrification. In this section, Neumann identifies racial prejudice as a salient theme in Pittsburgh, but she does not explore how racism influenced different policy practices in the two cities. But still, Remaking the Rust Belt provides valuable analysis of neoliberalism in the North American Rust Belt—especially in Pittsburgh. [End Page 230] Anthony Pratcher II Brown University Copyright © 2019 The Historical Society of Pennsylvania