Where Is The Rust Belt?

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

using Macy's, or mid-range department stores in general, as a barometer for anything in 2020 seems a bit suspect.

that retail model has been collapsing from coast to coast for a couple decades now

And not just the U.S. Stores and malls are dying here as well.
Years ago, Canada post thought that they would be irrelevant once e-mail came in, but now they are bigger then ever! I imagine it's the same with U.S postal service..In the case of Canada post, they just became like UPS ..parcel carriers.I suspect that in retrospect, they are surprising even themselves at their own re-invention.. Stores may be closing in down town cores, but in their places are mega warehouses opening up in the outskirts..I see more delivery trucks then ever now..Good thing my wife is responsible with her Amazon Prime account.

[Austin55]

Dumb question but whats the geographic difference in the rust belt vs the midwest?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Austin55

Dumb question but whats the geographic difference in the rust belt vs the midwest?

on the east:

"rust belt" traditionally includes western new york and pennsylvania .

"midwest" traditionally stops at the ohio border.



on the west:

"rust belt" traditionally stops in illinois/SE wisconson, with satellites like st. louis sometimes included.

"midwest" traditionally includes everything out to the dakotas, nebraska, and kansas.



"great lakes" usually more closely aligns with "rust belt" than "midwest", though again with satellites like st. louis and pittsburg included.

none of this stuff is exact; lots of blurred edges and singular outposts.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Razor

And not just the U.S. Stores and malls are dying here as well.
Years ago, Canada post thought that they would be irrelevant once e-mail came in, but now they are bigger then ever! I imagine it's the same with U.S postal service..In the case of Canada post, they just became like UPS ..parcel carriers.I suspect that in retrospect, they are surprising even themselves at their own re-invention.. Stores may be closing in down town cores, but in their places are mega warehouses opening up in the outskirts..I see more delivery trucks then ever now..Good thing my wife is responsible with her Amazon Prime account.

yeah, there is major upheaval in retail and in delivery services for sure. its kind of crazy. who knows where it all will go?

that said, some malls are doing fine. like outlet malls and those with everyday needs type stuff. at least here in the nyc area. we have the new hudson yards chi-chi mall in manhattan, but even that has at least a couple affordable shops, like uniqlo. who knows how that will turn out though? otoh, the new empire outlets mall seems to be doing well giving tourists a reason to stick around on staten island, instead of just taking the ferry right back. and last, but not least, the new urban styled big box malls around town are a-boomin, like gateway bronx terminal below yankee stadium, atlantic yards in downtown brooklyn and the harlem target/costco mall. it seems to be the older or more traditional 60s-80s styled malls that are struggling the most.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Austin55

Dumb question but whats the geographic difference in the rust belt vs the midwest?

Rust belt stretches further East into Upstate New York. Midwest goes further West to cities that don't fit the rust belt label like Minneapolis, Des Moines, Omaha, etc.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

yeah, there is major upheaval in retail and in delivery services for sure. its kind of crazy. who knows where it all will go?

that said, some malls are doing fine. like outlet malls and those with everyday needs type stuff. at least here in the nyc area.

Two Macy's closed/are closing on Long Island this year. And, even the one in otherwise booming downtown Brooklyn has downsized so that they could lease out half the store for office space.

[Acajack]

It's actually a bit worrisome when you think how so many of our cities (or at least parts of them) are probably hugely overbuilt when it comes to the retail needs of tomorrow.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Rust belt stretches further East into Upstate New York. Midwest goes further West to cities that don't fit the rust belt label like Minneapolis, Des Moines, Omaha, etc.

canada falls in there too. like hamilton rust belt and toronto an eastern midwest city and maybe like winnipeg a western one. after that, calgary and edmonton are western cities and ottawa, montreal eastern. then on to the coastal cities.

of course its all kind of generalized, but one thing is for certain and that is the rust belt region is well over and its long overdue for that label to go away. someone said use 'legacy cities' over the rust belt moniker and i like that better, its more positive and fitting.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It's actually a bit worrisome when you think how so many of our cities (or at least parts of them) are probably hugely overbuilt when it comes to the retail needs of tomorrow.

i dk what will happen to the mega-sized dept stores, but i do see a lot of former smaller retail spaces being put to other uses, albeit temporary, from plastered with street art or ads, to pop ups, zoomer instagram event places, to mini museums, etc.. not sure that is ideal, but i think people have to wrap around thinking of retail space being a lot more fluid that it was previously thought of as being. i mean the year or years lease is kind of old fashioned, those will probably need to be more flexible.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

i dk what will happen to the mega-sized dept stores, but i do see a lot of former smaller retail spaces being put to other uses, albeit temporary, from plastered with street art or ads, to pop ups, zoomer instagram event places, to mini museums, etc.. not sure that is ideal, but i think people have to wrap around thinking of retail space being a lot more fluid that it was previously thought of as being. i mean the year or years lease is kind of old fashioned, those will probably need to be more flexible.

The Canadian branch of the Sears department store chain completely shut down two years ago. It left huge holes in dozens of malls across the country. Most of them are still vacant AFAIK as no one wants to start up a department store chain these days. Some of them are being repurposed into smaller stores, fitness centres, condos for retired people, etc.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Austin55

Dumb question but whats the geographic difference in the rust belt vs the midwest?

Great lakes describes a geographic region which overlaps partly with a socio-economic region, the rust belt, which extends beyond the Great Lakes region deep in to eastern NYS and western PA as well as central OH, IN, and MI.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

canada falls in there too. like hamilton rust belt and toronto an eastern midwest city and maybe like winnipeg a western one. after that, calgary and edmonton are western cities and ottawa, montreal eastern. then on to the coastal cities.

of course its all kind of generalized, but one thing is for certain and that is the rust belt region is well over and its long overdue for that label to go away. someone said use 'legacy cities' over the rust belt moniker and i like that better, its more positive and fitting.

Hamilton as a rust belt city is an interesting debate because while it exhibits some of the stereotypical surface-level features, it also never declined in population from its industrial peak. Going back to the earlier discussion regarding immigration, it continues to receive a diverse array of immigrants from the most common destinations. The steel industry has declined, but given that it's the only large steel production center in the region, it received considerable government support and you don't see the abandonment that you do in a place like Youngstown.

McMaster University is an extremely beneficial institution to the city that anchors it with a large population of young people that provide a baseline level of activity and demand for centrally located housing. More and more of those students are sticking around afterwards as well to take advantage of more affordable housing.

Hamilton might be a small glimpse into what some other rust belt cities would look like if there wasn't a Sunbelt to lure hordes of people away. A city that had obviously passed its heyday and features the social problems arising from the loss of numerous manufacturing jobs, but also never saw mass exodus or the abandonment that leads to urban prairie in the city centre.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The Canadian branch of the Sears department store chain completely shut down two years ago. It left huge holes in dozens of malls across the country. Most of them are still vacant AFAIK as no one wants to start up a department store chain these days. Some of them are being repurposed into smaller stores, fitness centres, condos for retired people, etc.

I've literally seen this formula played out in dozens of the malls we've valued over the past couple years. If you lost a Sears or a Target, demise the space, relocate one of your smaller anchor tenants who want the prime location, lease part of it to a Goodlife gym, lease another part to Petsmart (I don't know why it's always Petsmart, they are everywhere and apparently people like shopping for pet stuff in person?), and take the rest to market as potentially smaller units. It takes a bit of upfront capital from the Landlord, but if they pull it off you can end up with higher income as the smaller tenants who replace Sear/Target pay higher rent on a psf basis than a single large anchor would.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Hamilton as a rust belt city is an interesting debate because while it exhibits some of the stereotypical surface-level features, it also never declined in population from its industrial peak. Going back to the earlier discussion regarding immigration, it continues to receive a diverse array of immigrants from the most common destinations. The steel industry has declined, but given that it's the only large steel production center in the region, it received considerable government support and you don't see the abandonment that you do in a place like Youngstown.

McMaster University is an extremely beneficial institution to the city that anchors it with a large population of young people that provide a baseline level of activity and demand for centrally located housing. More and more of those students are sticking around afterwards as well to take advantage of more affordable housing.

Hamilton might be a small glimpse into what some other rust belt cities would look like if there wasn't a Sunbelt to lure hordes of people away. A city that had obviously passed its heyday and features the social problems arising from the loss of numerous manufacturing jobs, but also never saw mass exodus or the abandonment that leads to urban prairie in the city centre.

A lot of those mid-size southwestern Ontario cities feel similar to places across the border in Michigan or New York that would be considered Rust Belt, and some even look "rusty". It's actually kind of interesting that the most economically dynamic region in Canada shares the region with some of the most stagnant areas in the U.S.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

on the east:

"rust belt" traditionally includes western new york and pennsylvania .

"midwest" traditionally stops at the ohio border.

on the west:

"rust belt" traditionally stops in illinois/SE wisconson, with satellites like st. louis sometimes included.

"midwest" traditionally includes everything out to the dakotas, nebraska, and kansas.


"great lakes" usually more closely aligns with "rust belt" than "midwest", though again with satellites like st. louis and pittsburg included.

none of this stuff is exact; lots of blurred edges and singular outposts.

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Rust belt stretches further East into Upstate New York. Midwest goes further West to cities that don't fit the rust belt label like Minneapolis, Des Moines, Omaha, etc.

Yeah... we've definitely talked the topic of where it is to death over the years on here, though it's always good to revisit and reconsider as city and regional trajectories change for good and bad... there are certainly blurred edges, outposts, and stretches that might not fit into the common understanding of where it is geographically located.

Because as noted on here in the past, further eastern cities like Springfield, Scranton-WB, Schenectady, and many others are damn rusty, affected by the exact same forces.

Basically, start at Springfield and head west on I-90... Pittsfield, Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo, South Bend... and head to Chicago. That route provides a pretty good spine (since it was built as the major east-west route connecting all the major and minor northern manufacturing centers), along which many smaller rusty cities and towns also sit in close proximity, and with major conduits heading north and south to all the other major and minor centers.

Originally Posted by mrnyc

canada falls in there too. like hamilton rust belt and toronto an eastern midwest city and maybe like winnipeg a western one. after that, calgary and edmonton are western cities and ottawa, montreal eastern. then on to the coastal cities.

of course its all kind of generalized, but one thing is for certain and that is the rust belt region is well over and its long overdue for that label to go away. someone said use 'legacy cities' over the rust belt moniker and i like that better, its more positive and fitting.

I would say parts of Ontario qualify... Ontario's auto assembly plants, mills, and factories, many of which have closed down/massively downsized over the past 40 years, can put it in the unfortunate category. Not as full of hopeless abandonment and industrial desolation as you can see on the large scale in the US cities though. Hell though, Toronto was pretty damn rusty 30 years ago.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by JManc

Great lakes describes a geographic region which overlaps partly with a socio-economic region, the rust belt, which extends beyond the Great Lakes region deep in to eastern NYS and western PA as well as central OH, IN, and MI.

Don't forget western Mass. It's probably the current northern eastern extent of the "rustbelt" So many people think Massachusetts and they think Boston. It's nothing like Boston. Decline in manufacturing activity and jobs, population, property values, educational attainment, public health, infrastructure, etc. have been constants in W Mass for decades now.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Don't forget western Mass. It's probably the current northern eastern extent of the "rustbelt" So many people think Massachusetts and they think Boston. It's nothing like Boston. Decline in manufacturing activity and jobs, population, property values, educational attainment, public health, infrastructure, etc. have been constants in W Mass for decades now.

yeah, throw uptsate ny in with that as well. not sure how exactly it overlapped the midwestern rust belt era with steel and big auto though. some of it declined long before and some after.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

I've literally seen this formula played out in dozens of the malls we've valued over the past couple years. If you lost a Sears or a Target, demise the space, relocate one of your smaller anchor tenants who want the prime location, lease part of it to a Goodlife gym, lease another part to Petsmart (I don't know why it's always Petsmart, they are everywhere and apparently people like shopping for pet stuff in person?), and take the rest to market as potentially smaller units. It takes a bit of upfront capital from the Landlord, but if they pull it off you can end up with higher income as the smaller tenants who replace Sear/Target pay higher rent on a psf basis than a single large anchor would.

that sounds like a very crafty way to handle old mall retail. at least for now. you wonder about these classic malls though in our current era of mailed merch.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

A lot of those mid-size southwestern Ontario cities feel similar to places across the border in Michigan or New York that would be considered Rust Belt, and some even look "rusty". It's actually kind of interesting that the most economically dynamic region in Canada shares the region with some of the most stagnant areas in the U.S.

That's what I mean though, it goes back to the debate on whether Rust Belt is purely a visual classification, ie. does the place look rundown and rusty? or does it go deeper to underlying demographic changes and other factors?

You can drive by something like this in London and obviously it would draw fair comparison to Toledo or Detroit.



but that doesn't really tell you the whole story that London is a relatively healthy metro overall with a Downtown core that is growing (and was never really abandoned in the first place). London doesn't even receive that much immigration, and demographically it behaves much more like a comparable American rust belt city. If there was a Canadian version of Atlanta or Dallas maybe it would have cleared out and look much similar to Akron?

One other advantage that Southern Ontario has is that it acts as the De Facto "Education Belt" in Canada. London, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton, Guelph, Toronto are all within 100 miles of each other and each feature student populations of 40,000+ (except for Guelph). These universities and affiliated colleges are large employers that are relatively recession-proof, and feature large student bodies that like to go to bars and restaurants downtown. Columbus also continues to be a strong rust belt performer in no small part to it's educational presence.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

that sounds like a very crafty way to handle old mall retail. at least for now. you wonder about these classic malls though in our current era of mailed merch.

The forward-looking malls (that have the resources to do so) are transitioning away from a heavy dependence on the "material" towards more focus on the "experiential" (restaurants, clubs, cinemas, entertertainment, attractions, etc.) and in some cases, residential too.