5 ms·

This may be a bit of an ignorant question, but... Are "dying cities/slums" a purely American phenomenon, in terms of rich first-world countries? Is there simi

This may be a bit of an ignorant question, but... Are "dying cities/slums" a purely American phenomenon, in terms of rich first-world countries? Is there similarly a "rust belt" in Germany, of cities that had an economic collapse after manufacturing died out? Are there rich European countries with flailing cities that devolve into crime and poverty? Does Europe have its own Bessemers, Detroits? (though I do hear Detroit isn't as bad as it's made out to be)

Lammy 5y ago
America's "Rust Belt" cities all tend to have one thing in common: a large black population that originally migrated there in the 20th century for industrial jobs that largely no longer exist. Think Detroit with the auto industry. Camden NJ with New York Ship, Victor, and Campbell's Soup. Gary Indiana with US Steel, etc etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American)#First_Great_Migration_(1910%E2%80%931940) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_Ameri...
- cat199 5y ago
  > America's "Rust Belt" cities all tend to have one thing in common Not anti union, but these also had high union activity, which some explain as a cause of their 'rustification' as companies moved production elsewhere (like Alabama) to avoid.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    Not even Alabama but overseas where not only is there no union, but companies can get away with paying starvation wages to effective slaves. How an American is going to compete with a guy willing to work for $0.50/day on an 18 hour shift 7 days a week is a mystery. He doesn't even ask for healthcare, and when he dies of exhaustion there are hundreds more waiting to take his place because that's a huge amount of money for them. One of the few things I think Trump got right is when he brought tariffs back. If you want companies to keep jobs in the US you have to make the labor cost just as much no matter where you find it. Otherwise it is just a race to the bottom.
    - astrange 5y ago
      > How an American is going to compete with a guy willing to work for $0.50/day on an 18 hour shift 7 days a week is a mystery. He doesn't even ask for healthcare, and when he dies of exhaustion there are hundreds more waiting to take his place because that's a huge amount of money for them. Well, that guy would do a really bad job, especially after he dies. You can compete with him by staying healthy and being much more productive. That's not an accurate description of overseas labor though, those people are skilled at what they do and their PPP-adjusted pay is better than that. (Sometimes overseas developers aren't skilled at enterprise development, in that case their skill is scamming the outsourcing manager.) > One of the few things I think Trump got right is when he brought tariffs back. If you want companies to keep jobs in the US you have to make the labor cost just as much no matter where you find it. That's not what a tariff does, a tariff makes foreign companies' products more expensive for domestic customers. It's just a pointless tax increase. And when the other country fights back it makes your products more expensive for foreign customers, hurting you. Keeping jobs domestically means doing the opposite, increasing foreign customers for your stuff. This falls under industrial policy and it's what the overseas countries taking your jobs did better than us.
      - emodendroket 5y ago
        I mean it depends on the job... you are not going to outcompete textile workers in South or Southeast Asia.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      The thing about Trump's tariffs is the rhetoric didn't match the way it was actually used (to the extent there was a strategy at all, it seemed like moving production from China to other low-wage countries was a bigger priority than protecting pay and working conditions in the US).
  - Lammy 5y ago
    Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Negro_Labor_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Negro_Labor_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Negro_Labor_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Negro_Labor_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Revolutionary_Black_Workers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Revolutionary_Black_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Revolutionary_Union_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Revolutionary_Union_Move... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Black_Trade_Unionists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Black_Trade_Union... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Brotherhood_of_Workers_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Brotherhood_of_Worker... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Sleeping_Car_Porters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Sleeping_Car_Po... (See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Commission_v._Pullman_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Commission_v._Pullman.... ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_of_Railway_Employees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_of_R... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_Actors_Guild_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_Actors_Guild_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_Labor_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_Labor_Committee
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      HN should reformat wiki links to jump straight to the page title, since these long lists render identically before you open the thread.
    - cat199 5y ago
      Not sure what point you are making here. Most of these seem to be segregated unions for AA people that existed in the same places as the corresponding non-AA union run by the same overarching organization (e.g. AFL-CIO, etc).
rm_-rf_slash 5y ago
Chinese cities in the northeast Yellow Sea area (like Dalian) were historically industrial centers, but are now somewhat of a Chinese rust belt while the industrial gravity has moved south (ex: Shenzhen, Chongqing).
willcipriano 5y ago
>Are "dying cities/slums" a purely American phenomenon, in terms of rich first-world countries? The UK definitely has declining factory towns (often called mill towns there) similar to the US. Northern England is like that for the most part. Less of a rust belt and more of a rust hat.
mc32 5y ago
I believe the Ruhr valley experienced some rust belt like phenomena. Abandoned factories and such, but not like NAm. Germany’s economic might rests on their mittelstand midsized businesses (KMU) typically family owned or run and which are to some extent protected by the gov.
KingOfCoders 5y ago
In the former "rust belt" of Germany unemployement rate is higher (~12%) compared to the rest of Germany (~6%). And although we had social reforms in the 2000s cutting unemployment benefits - today with unemployment benefits, "free" health care and social security payments you can live from (though should be higher), areas with higher unemployment are not comparable to the US. (Also German carmakers have - at least until now - done much better than Detroit for a variety of reasons).
Darmody 5y ago
It happens everywhere or almost everywhere in the West. Some country simply lose population due migration to other countries. Inside immigration is also big. Small towns/cities are losing population while big cities/capitals are rapidly growing. We have hundreds of towns that once had thousands inhabitants and now they barely have a couple hundred and haven't seen a kid in more than a decade. But as far as I know, there's no Detroits in Europe. The cities with most crimes are also the ones that are attracting more people and immigrants. The abandoned places are quiet and peaceful. There's also growing trend of trying to revive those places by people that just can't take big cities anymore or people who work for home, etc. Why would they pay a huge chunk of their salary for a crappy shared flat on the city when they can live on a nice house with garden only 5 hours away?
- astrange 5y ago
  Detroit is growing back these days. Even though a lot of it is abandoned, it's still hard to buy the old houses because you have to pay their back taxes or something, but it is coming back thanks to companies like Quicken. As for crime, it's some economic and some that Detroit was the center of the car industry which means everyone was huffing leaded gasoline fumes for decades. In Europe everyone is still breathing in diesel, which just kills you rather than makes you a rage monster.
sfvisser 5y ago
Oh yes. Charleroi Belgium comes to mind. Once a prosperous industrious town, now the glory is gone. Recently read somewhere there is a bit of revival, culturally at least. Economically I’m not sure. A bit like Detroit maybe.
- the_svd_doctor 5y ago
  Yeah, Charleroi is a very good example. Very similar (in spirit, I don’t have first hand knowledge) to Detroit.
dna_polymerase 5y ago
> Is there similarly a "rust belt" in Germany Not yet, but we are doing out best to deliver that in the near future \s What we do have is sort of a coal belt. The Ruhr Area, where coal mining used to be big but has died out. Some regions did not recover from the closing of mines, Gelsenkirchen for example.
busterarm 5y ago
No. Most of Japan is dying as nearly its entire population moves to Tokyo. And that's only a slight sprinkle of hyperbole. Other regions are sustained only by tourism or by other industries where the average worker age is past 60.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Government employment and construction (buoyed by frequent government spending on infrastructure) are also major sources of employment outside the Tokyo metro area. Osaka and Kyoto also have fairly decent numbers of jobs, I think.
gruez 5y ago
You mean something like this? https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-one-euro-homes-castropignano-molise/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-one-euro-homes-cast...
INTPenis 5y ago
Lots of dead industry in Sweden too because there was a major shift during the 90s and 2000s that remotely located industry in the Swedish forest could not keep up with. I don't know more details, I am only speaking observationally. Someone else might tell you why this happened. I would assume it has to do with globalization and other nations being more competitive than local business.
- astrange 5y ago
  It's because everyone has to book their washing machines two weeks in advance.
  - INTPenis 5y ago
    GTFO of my head.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
Yeah, outside of Berlin a lot of eastern German states/cities have lost people IIRC.
Glawen 5y ago
we have dying cities and poverty in Europe, but it does not devolve into crime. Each city in Europe have at least a suburb where crime is more prevalent, poverty is a contributing factor but not the only one.
dvdkon 5y ago
I don't have any first-hand experience, but here in the Czech Republic (not rich by any means, but still pretty up there) there are some places that have the reputation of ghettos. They're mostly located in border areas, which had a sizeable German population a were annexed by nazi Germany. After World War 2, most of the Germans were driven out and "resettled" under the communist regime. Add heavy industry and mining activity sometimes destroying the original towns and you can see how the region might not be the most cheerful place. Someone also had the brilliant idea of moving all the Roma from a town to a separate ghetto, which turned out as expected. It's not that any city is altogether full of crime and poverty, personally I'd say they're just less desirable with full-on "crime and poverty" being noticeable only in some hotspots (but then again, I don't live there and only ever visit for short periods of time, so really all I can say is "it doesn't seem that bad").
nszceta 5y ago
>(though I do hear Detroit isn't as bad as it's made out to be) Observe for yourself the recordings by CharlieBo313

Lammy 5y ago

America's "Rust Belt" cities all tend to have one thing in common: a large black population that originally migrated there in the 20th century for industrial jobs that largely no longer exist. Think Detroit with the auto industry. Camden NJ with New York Ship, Victor, and Campbell's Soup. Gary Indiana with US Steel, etc etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American)#First_Great_Migration_(1910%E2%80%931940) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_Ameri...

cat199 5y ago
> America's "Rust Belt" cities all tend to have one thing in common Not anti union, but these also had high union activity, which some explain as a cause of their 'rustification' as companies moved production elsewhere (like Alabama) to avoid.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Not even Alabama but overseas where not only is there no union, but companies can get away with paying starvation wages to effective slaves. How an American is going to compete with a guy willing to work for $0.50/day on an 18 hour shift 7 days a week is a mystery. He doesn't even ask for healthcare, and when he dies of exhaustion there are hundreds more waiting to take his place because that's a huge amount of money for them. One of the few things I think Trump got right is when he brought tariffs back. If you want companies to keep jobs in the US you have to make the labor cost just as much no matter where you find it. Otherwise it is just a race to the bottom.
  - astrange 5y ago
    > How an American is going to compete with a guy willing to work for $0.50/day on an 18 hour shift 7 days a week is a mystery. He doesn't even ask for healthcare, and when he dies of exhaustion there are hundreds more waiting to take his place because that's a huge amount of money for them. Well, that guy would do a really bad job, especially after he dies. You can compete with him by staying healthy and being much more productive. That's not an accurate description of overseas labor though, those people are skilled at what they do and their PPP-adjusted pay is better than that. (Sometimes overseas developers aren't skilled at enterprise development, in that case their skill is scamming the outsourcing manager.) > One of the few things I think Trump got right is when he brought tariffs back. If you want companies to keep jobs in the US you have to make the labor cost just as much no matter where you find it. That's not what a tariff does, a tariff makes foreign companies' products more expensive for domestic customers. It's just a pointless tax increase. And when the other country fights back it makes your products more expensive for foreign customers, hurting you. Keeping jobs domestically means doing the opposite, increasing foreign customers for your stuff. This falls under industrial policy and it's what the overseas countries taking your jobs did better than us.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      I mean it depends on the job... you are not going to outcompete textile workers in South or Southeast Asia.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    The thing about Trump's tariffs is the rhetoric didn't match the way it was actually used (to the extent there was a strategy at all, it seemed like moving production from China to other low-wage countries was a bigger priority than protecting pay and working conditions in the US).
- Lammy 5y ago
  Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Negro_Labor_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Negro_Labor_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Negro_Labor_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Negro_Labor_Congress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Revolutionary_Black_Workers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Revolutionary_Black_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Revolutionary_Union_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Revolutionary_Union_Move... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Black_Trade_Unionists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Black_Trade_Union... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Brotherhood_of_Workers_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Brotherhood_of_Worker... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Sleeping_Car_Porters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Sleeping_Car_Po... (See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Commission_v._Pullman_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Commission_v._Pullman.... ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_of_Railway_Employees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_of_R... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_Actors_Guild_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_Actors_Guild_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_Labor_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_Labor_Committee
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    HN should reformat wiki links to jump straight to the page title, since these long lists render identically before you open the thread.
  - cat199 5y ago
    Not sure what point you are making here. Most of these seem to be segregated unions for AA people that existed in the same places as the corresponding non-AA union run by the same overarching organization (e.g. AFL-CIO, etc).

rm_-rf_slash 5y ago

Chinese cities in the northeast Yellow Sea area (like Dalian) were historically industrial centers, but are now somewhat of a Chinese rust belt while the industrial gravity has moved south (ex: Shenzhen, Chongqing).

willcipriano 5y ago

>Are "dying cities/slums" a purely American phenomenon, in terms of rich first-world countries? The UK definitely has declining factory towns (often called mill towns there) similar to the US. Northern England is like that for the most part. Less of a rust belt and more of a rust hat.

mc32 5y ago

I believe the Ruhr valley experienced some rust belt like phenomena. Abandoned factories and such, but not like NAm. Germany’s economic might rests on their mittelstand midsized businesses (KMU) typically family owned or run and which are to some extent protected by the gov.

KingOfCoders 5y ago

In the former "rust belt" of Germany unemployement rate is higher (~12%) compared to the rest of Germany (~6%). And although we had social reforms in the 2000s cutting unemployment benefits - today with unemployment benefits, "free" health care and social security payments you can live from (though should be higher), areas with higher unemployment are not comparable to the US. (Also German carmakers have - at least until now - done much better than Detroit for a variety of reasons).

Darmody 5y ago

It happens everywhere or almost everywhere in the West. Some country simply lose population due migration to other countries. Inside immigration is also big. Small towns/cities are losing population while big cities/capitals are rapidly growing. We have hundreds of towns that once had thousands inhabitants and now they barely have a couple hundred and haven't seen a kid in more than a decade. But as far as I know, there's no Detroits in Europe. The cities with most crimes are also the ones that are attracting more people and immigrants. The abandoned places are quiet and peaceful. There's also growing trend of trying to revive those places by people that just can't take big cities anymore or people who work for home, etc. Why would they pay a huge chunk of their salary for a crappy shared flat on the city when they can live on a nice house with garden only 5 hours away?

astrange 5y ago
Detroit is growing back these days. Even though a lot of it is abandoned, it's still hard to buy the old houses because you have to pay their back taxes or something, but it is coming back thanks to companies like Quicken. As for crime, it's some economic and some that Detroit was the center of the car industry which means everyone was huffing leaded gasoline fumes for decades. In Europe everyone is still breathing in diesel, which just kills you rather than makes you a rage monster.

sfvisser 5y ago

Oh yes. Charleroi Belgium comes to mind. Once a prosperous industrious town, now the glory is gone. Recently read somewhere there is a bit of revival, culturally at least. Economically I’m not sure. A bit like Detroit maybe.

the_svd_doctor 5y ago
Yeah, Charleroi is a very good example. Very similar (in spirit, I don’t have first hand knowledge) to Detroit.

dna_polymerase 5y ago

> Is there similarly a "rust belt" in Germany Not yet, but we are doing out best to deliver that in the near future \s What we do have is sort of a coal belt. The Ruhr Area, where coal mining used to be big but has died out. Some regions did not recover from the closing of mines, Gelsenkirchen for example.

busterarm 5y ago

No. Most of Japan is dying as nearly its entire population moves to Tokyo. And that's only a slight sprinkle of hyperbole. Other regions are sustained only by tourism or by other industries where the average worker age is past 60.

emodendroket 5y ago
Government employment and construction (buoyed by frequent government spending on infrastructure) are also major sources of employment outside the Tokyo metro area. Osaka and Kyoto also have fairly decent numbers of jobs, I think.

gruez 5y ago

You mean something like this? https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-one-euro-homes-castropignano-molise/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-one-euro-homes-cast...

INTPenis 5y ago

Lots of dead industry in Sweden too because there was a major shift during the 90s and 2000s that remotely located industry in the Swedish forest could not keep up with. I don't know more details, I am only speaking observationally. Someone else might tell you why this happened. I would assume it has to do with globalization and other nations being more competitive than local business.

astrange 5y ago
It's because everyone has to book their washing machines two weeks in advance.
- INTPenis 5y ago
  GTFO of my head.

TulliusCicero 5y ago

Yeah, outside of Berlin a lot of eastern German states/cities have lost people IIRC.

Glawen 5y ago

we have dying cities and poverty in Europe, but it does not devolve into crime. Each city in Europe have at least a suburb where crime is more prevalent, poverty is a contributing factor but not the only one.

dvdkon 5y ago

I don't have any first-hand experience, but here in the Czech Republic (not rich by any means, but still pretty up there) there are some places that have the reputation of ghettos. They're mostly located in border areas, which had a sizeable German population a were annexed by nazi Germany. After World War 2, most of the Germans were driven out and "resettled" under the communist regime. Add heavy industry and mining activity sometimes destroying the original towns and you can see how the region might not be the most cheerful place. Someone also had the brilliant idea of moving all the Roma from a town to a separate ghetto, which turned out as expected. It's not that any city is altogether full of crime and poverty, personally I'd say they're just less desirable with full-on "crime and poverty" being noticeable only in some hotspots (but then again, I don't live there and only ever visit for short periods of time, so really all I can say is "it doesn't seem that bad").

nszceta 5y ago

>(though I do hear Detroit isn't as bad as it's made out to be) Observe for yourself the recordings by CharlieBo313