Comment by magduf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by magduf | Hacker News Reader

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>and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse.

You can scream at a TV all you want, but that's never going to turn you into a horse.

On a more serious note, the industries that made these cities what they are are mostly gone now, and they're not coming back. The thing that made these cities attractive for these industries is no longer all that relevant: their location on the water. These days, there just isn't much to make these cities attractive for new industries, except maybe cheap real estate, but you can get that in many other places in the US while not being burdened by 1) terrible weather and 2) crumbling old infrastructure that's going to cost a fortune to modernize. I think these cities can reinvent themselves to a degree, taking advantage of the many old buildings and such, but I don't think they'll ever get back to the population levels and economic statuses they had in the past, just like Rome is probably never going to be the leading city in Europe again.

> their location on the water

Which I misread as "the location of their water". Which is actually quite serious. See

https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/in-dayton-ohio-an-econo...

> As states like California face major water shortages, city officials in Dayton sense a business opportunity. ... the self-filtering, self-recharging freshwater supply, along with the rivers, once made Dayton attractive to water-intensive industries in the 19th century.

> Mills, factories, and countless little breweries lined the river before Prohibition, and Dayton was a hub of innovation and wealth.

> ...

> “We’re running into limits,” says Peter Gleick, the head of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Oakland, California. “...In the past we’ve sort of assumed enough water would always be available, and I think we can no longer assume that’s going to be the case.”

> ...

> “Back to the midwest” — that phrase is music to Karen Thomas’s ears. Thomas is the head of water marketing for Dayton (yes, that’s actually a job).

> “We have an abundant water source,” she says. “We don’t believe that we would have to worry about water.”

> ...

> “Water is a public good, but it’s also a commodity,” she says.

> An economic development team in Dayton has conducted talks with several food processors, manufacturers, and beverage makers that could use an inexpensive and abundant supply of water. Companies that choose Dayton would face little of the regulation placed on water diversions in the Great Lakes basin; here, if you can drill a well, you can drain it.

The article continues on to pollution issues in the Midwest, so more twists ahead.

This is exactly why Nestle set up shop in Michigan. They can afford to maintain their own infrastructure to pump and bottle the cheap, abundant water and the government could give a damn about the marginalized, majority black and latino population that remains in the area.

Big corporate players are noticing the trend and playing the long game. There's a reason why Michigan and Wisconsin have crippled collective bargaining and imposed restrictive voter-ID measures.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/29/nestle-pays-...

> There's a reason why Michigan and Wisconsin have crippled collective bargaining and imposed restrictive voter-ID measures.

This is, in all practical matters, incorrect for Michigan. See the following, directly from the relevant authority's website:

"Michigan does have a voter identification requirement at the polls. Voters are asked to present an acceptable photo ID such as a Michigan driver's license or identification card. Please note that voters who do not have an acceptable form of ID or failed to bring it with them to the polls still can vote. They simply sign a brief affidavit stating that they're not in possession of a photo ID. Their ballots are included with all others and counted on Election Day."

https://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127-29836-202520--F,00...

I lived in the state for years and met many people who never showed acceptable ID to vote.

Nestle set up shop 185 miles from Detroit because there is a nice aquifer there and the permit was cheap. Detroit actually has a good water supply and good treatment (their distribution system is aging).

I'd be fine with Nestle paying a whole lot more for the permit (because bottled water is dumb), but the value of the water they are extracting isn't even that high, so if you made them pay high prices and used all the money improving municipal water systems, it wouldn't make much difference.

Ohio is particularly useful as a source of flammable water…

"Come see our river which catches on fire. It's so polluted that all our fish have AIDS."

For those unfamiliar, the Cuyahoga river which flows through Ohio was so polluted at various points that it caught on fire 10+ times. The fires were one of the catalysts for the environmental movement.

> the industries that made these cities what they are are mostly gone now These cities often have attractive qualities for other industries, and with enough foresight these cities can position themselves well to succeed in the future. Many have been; e.g. Pittsburgh shed its steel roots and now is home of a leading health care industry, and a burgeoning tech one.

You mean that some (or perhaps, "a few") have been. I'd say that Pittsburgh is more the exception than the rule. Also, Pittsburgh is probably a little unique: they have multiple universities there, including UPittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, and Duquesne, so they were in a good position to move on to other industries. Also, I'm thinking the weather there is a good bit better than in Detroit or Flint or Buffalo or Toledo, which get lake-effect weather giving them very cold winters.

I'm guessing that if you want to predict a city's ability to transform to a haven for new industries (like tech), you need to look at how much of a college town it is. Carnegie Mellon is a top-ranked private university with 13,500 students (so not a tiny place), and just one of many large universities there. They also have a lot of nice cultural stuff there, largely thanks to Mr. Carnegie, such as the museums. Most other rust-belt cities can't boast these features. Cleveland has CWRU (11,300 students), but I can't think of a whole lot of academia in cities like Detroit, Buffalo, and definitely not Toledo or Flint.

Both Detroit and Buffalo both have large public research universities along with many smaller public and private institutions.

Detroit has the University of Michigan with 44,700 students nearby (about the same distance as my unfortunately long commute). Buffalo has the University of Buffalo with 30,600 students. Both universities are among the largest employers in their metro areas.

Both metros have tried to diversify their economies, as have Pittsburgh and Cleveland. The health care industry is a large source of jobs for all of them.

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