The Rise and Fall and Rise of Cleveland

Abstract

Cleveland, Ohio, long the quintessential blue-collar, working-class American city, has been fashioned through a series of periodic transformations tightly linked to the changing rhythms of the national and global economies. After a brief review of the city's historical development, this article explores Cleveland's descent in the face of massive and traumatic deindustrialization. In the 1990s, as the midwestern economy has become thoroughly restructured around the prerequisites of post-Fordism, Cleveland has enjoyed an unexpected renaissance, including an incipient high-technology sector, producer services, and as a center of cultural consumption. A consistent theme throughout is that the details of Cleveland's experience can be understood only in reference to the city's changing competitive position; in this light, it offers a lens through which national and global tendencies conjoin in unique local contexts.