The death of Cleveland- America’s heartland as a ghost town

[Liberal_in_LA]

The death of Cleveland- America’s heartland as a ghost town
By Paul Wallis.

As the foreclosure wars drag on, the reality has become a brutal testimony to the financial catastrophes the US is currently enduring. The sheer devastation is nowhere more visible than in Cleveland, once the heart of the heartland.

The diminishing of America is now a social psychological problem as well as an economic problem. The traditional views of the nation are being replaced by an ugly, uncompromising economic reality in which the American Dream is now a non-issue. Even more startling, the “service economy” which replaced the industrial economy is also vulnerable to offshoring.

One economist, Alan Blinder, is concerned that 28 to 42 million service jobs are able to be shifted offshore, and is looking at a re-categorization of jobs into those which can be done anywhere and those which can’t. A customer service job, for instance, can be done from anywhere on Earth, while the job of a doctor can’t. The short message, however, is that things can get a lot worse.


Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/299206#ixzz13gUaGnBg

Empty Cleveland mall - once was one of nation's largest


Award winning photo essay on Cleveland
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1738458_1585584,00.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Depends on specialty

Do not go into radiology, for example.

Damn this nation is set for something really ugly.

[billlll]

8. dr by internet for many ills.. if just need RX pills

Should be possible if not already

---Exist now?

[Barack_America]

19. A huge percentage of my medical school class is going into radiology.

I think they're insane.

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. They are, Australian doctor can do the job

For much cheaper. If I were going to medical I'd do er medicine or family medicine. For job safety er medicine. Telemedicine will affect many specialties.

[HughBeaumont]

2. I remember when Randall Park Mall used to be busy, a couple of decades ago.

It's like spelunking in there now. Nothing but a cavernous echo chamber. Sad.

[cbdo2007]

3. I always thought these abandoned malls would make a great paint-ball area.

Some paint ball company should buy up one of these for massive paint-ball wars. Charge $20 per person and they could make a fortune.

[Dappleganger]

30. Malls like this would be great for a university or community college to move into.

[Greyhound]

4. "...things can get a lot worse." and they will. n/t

:kick: & R

[HereSince1628]

5. Citizens United decision off-shored campaign financing and democracy

Please read and follow these directions:

[blondeatlast]

6. Quite literally heartbreaking. I've no other words. nt

[AC_Mem]

7. My old hometown

and several of my family members still live there. It is sad how bad it has gotten there. Hopefully soon an American will discover the next "big" thing in technology and this will help workers in cities such as Cleveland.

[DeSwiss]

20. Mine too.

I remember when I was a kid, one of the teevee stations used to intone the motto for Cleveland as: "The Best Location In The Nation."

:cry:

K&R

[charlie]

33. I remember it as one of the iconic urban centers

If you talked about San Francisco, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, you also included Cleveland. Going to Cleveland was going to the BIG City.

Now it has half the population it had in 1950. And you don't hear about it nearly as often.

Cincinnati is shrinking almost as fast.

:wow:

[LeftinOH]

9. The vacant mall shown in the photo is Randall Park Mall -which is located in a suburb. And,

the demise of that particular mall (like many others in the region) is mostly the result of the gross over-development of commercial areas.

EVERY suburb these days thinks that the solution to their financial worries can be solved with a shopping mall of their very own, and a few big-box stores thrown in for good measure. Northeast Ohio is already sprawled out & "malled" out because each cheek-by-jowl suburb has been competing against all the others for dollars -and a handful of jobs. It's vile -and there's no way to stop it.

[billlll]

11. Progressive voting there- increasing or not?

Kucinich is from there. Is cle. more progressive than Milwaukee?

Kucinich is excellent.

[LeftinOH]

14. Kucinich's local office is a few blocks from my home. Progressive voting is

a given in much of the area (Cleveland and its original 'streetcar' suburbs). Predictably, the farther out into the 'burbs one goes (and the larger/newer/more expensive the houses are), the voting trends start to turn Repub.. e.g.: Medina County.

[WinkyDink]

10. And don't be so sure about the task of diagnosing. This might VERY WELL be out-sourced.

A check-list, a few Q&A's, and voila.

[Hepburn]

12. Ohio has been part of the great "rust belt" for at least the last 20 years.

I am a native of Ohio but have lived in California for nearly 50 years. I went back to Ohio for a visit and another transplanted Ohioan, also a long time Calif transplant, and I discussed how sad some parts of Ohio looked ~~ primarily the Akron-Canton and Youngtown areas. As a joke, I brought back some rusted screws, gift wrapped them, and gave them to my friend as a reminder of where we both were born.

Ohio's economy seems to have stagnated long ago ~~ even when other areas of our nation were booming.

[safeinOhio]

13. One thing will change all of that in a few years

Water. Detroit, Cleveland, etc, got it. Go ahead and move your headquarters to Texas and the South West. You'll be begging to come back some day. Location, raw materials and a work force too.

[madrchsod]

25. i won`t be around to see that but..

maybe my kids and grandkids will.

[reggie the dog]

15. Detroit, Flint, Toledo, Pittsburgh.

[Bozita]

16. Large hunks of Detroit are urban prairie today. See "Detroit Wildlife" - link

http://vimeo.com/2371774


http://www.doobybrain.com/2009/01/30/documentary-about-the-decay-of-detroit/

Gordon said I should watch this video called Detroit Wildlife of one person’s depiction of Detroit City as a wonderful transforming landscape rather than a decaying former metropolis. The video is a teaser for what looks to be a larger production and it certainly makes me want to find out more about Detroit (or even visit the city if I can in the future).

In Detroit Wildlife, the city is seen as an empty and haunting place filled with feral animals, homeless people, and abandoned buildings everywhere you look. It really reminded me of the movie I Am Legend where New York City starts being taken over by shrubbery and nature as human existence is gone. In a sense, the current state of Detroit is an urban explorers dream and part of the reason why I now want to visit the place before it falls any further into deprecation.

As I watched this documentary, I began to realize how something so tragic as the dead man frozen in ice could have happened in a place like Detroit. It doesn’t justify the act of leaving a body there for a month, but it does shine some light on the potential causes of why something like this would happen in Detroit.

[DeSwiss]

21. Thanks for the link.

That video is stunning. Absolutely stunning. It should be required for it to be broadcast on every teevee station in primetime.

It's time for the MSM to stop the bullshitting and to tell the TRUTH.

Because people are still in denial. They're afraid to face the truth. But the longer reality is put-off, the harder it'll be to adapt......

[Divine Discontent]

36. it's all gonna start looking like Buck Rogers movie in the dying big cities that have decayed.

[reggie the dog]

17. 500 down 375 a month and the windows are already boarded up

i could live in the livingroom, have a kitchen and dedicate 2 rooms to growing weed and sell it to people i know in chicago... any other unemployed people out there???? you could make good money, if you get busted you could blame it on squatters.... drug dealing has to be one of the last industries doing well ....

[Gaedel]

23. Except

Someone will just put a gun in your face and take off with the fruits of your labor.

That is life in the "D".

[reggie the dog]

27. yeah, but this is the "c" for cleveland

and i may be a pot smoking hippy but i was raised by a gun toting unionist biker... i have guns, i can aim, and i would shoot a bandit... but unless i find no work teaching i will not be trying to become a cannabis farmer on the big scale anytime soon...

[reggie the dog]

18. on a serious note

these photos have been saved and will be used to teach about the rust belt, along with the driving tour of detroit which shows scenes like this there...


i also forgot that i imagine trenton, east rutherford...lots of cities out east are screwed too, not just in the great lakes region

[FarCenter]

22. I don't think there are any auto plants in the East

Ford Mahwah, NJ; GM Linden, NJ; Chrysler, Newark, DE; GM, Wilmington, DE; are all gone.

Rode the commuter train past the Linden, NJ plant site while it was being torn down. Went past yesterday, and it is a big open field.

[reggie the dog]

26. our industrial base gone, destroyed and all the bombs have

fallen elsewhere...

[Bozita]

28. Had those American bombs all fallen here, they couldn't have done this much damage.

[madrchsod]

24. .america is no longer a great nation ....

it`s a second world country feeding of the corpse of it`s citizens.

i feel sorry for the children of this country.

[derby378]

29. Ever see that grisly MANHUNT game by Rockstar?

It's set in a fictional Rust Belt ghost town called Carcer City, about the size of Gary, IN. Lots of dilapidated urban sprawl that has no police presence. Plenty of room for squatters, vagabonds, and people of malicious intent.

[SammyWinstonJack]

31. K&R

[hugo_from_TN]

32. I blame Lebron.

[Panaconda]

35. K&R n/t

[Enthusiast]

37. Free trade and globalization. nt

[Panaconda]

38. Kicking