Fifteen years after he left, San Francisco journalist Gordon Young returned to his hometown of Flint, Michigan, hoping to contribute to the city’s revitalization by buying and fixing up a home in a deteriorating neighborhood. That goal turned out to be harder to achieve than Young anticipated, but his memoir provides a thoughtful look at Flint’s history and the challenges of economic development and renewal for Rust Belt communities.
Tag: economic development
Detroit City Is the Place To Be , by Mark Binelli
Detroit native Binelli returned to his hometown to chronicle its decline but also efforts to revitalize the city. His journey takes readers from abandoned factories to street-corner blues concerts to art installations.
Farewell to Factory Towns?
Maynard Seider’s film does something rare: it explores an arts-centered economic development effort in North Adams, Massachusetts, but it also tracks the limits of such projects and offers a critique of contemporary capitalism.
The Half-Life of Deindustrialization 