This is just an excerpt from a much longer article on the end game of Midwestern manufacturing.  I thought it was pretty good, and it contains an admission from a local official that the region botched economic development for transition to the new economy

 

'Death by a thousand cuts'

 

....I drove into Dayton, Ohio, on a recent Monday in May. Downtown, the streets are lined with government buildings. There's one decent hotel, not much for a city of 158,000. I saw little commerce--a few clothing stores, discount stores, pawnshops. Not much traffic. Parking is easy. The city looked neat; not shabby, but dull, with little life.

 

More below

on edit, here is the link

 

Its a pretty good article, and talks to regional cooperation as an issue.

 

....I drove into Dayton, Ohio, on a recent Monday in May. Downtown, the streets are lined with government buildings. There's one decent hotel, not much for a city of 158,000. I saw little commerce--a few clothing stores, discount stores, pawnshops. Not much traffic. Parking is easy. The city looked neat; not shabby, but dull, with little life.

 

Not to knock government, nor to glorify traffic jams, but a healthy downtown needs more than government buildings, and real cities are busy places.

 

The streets are lined with government buildings? We have the courts building, the federal building, Montgomery County offices and jail, the new juvenile detention center and Dayton city offices. That's no more here than any other midsize city should have. That accounts for about 3% of downtown. And no mention of Dayton's performing arts culture or mention that downtown Dayton is home to one of the top community colleges in the country? That's almost insulting. I can't stand when someone comes in from out of town, spends an hour here and automatically thinks they know everything. Yea, Dayton has some issues, but give us a little credit.

 

Mostly, it invented the electric ignition for autos, which led to the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co., or Delco for short.

 

It was the electric starter that was invented here, not the electric ignition. They are two different and separate components.

 

Outside of those, the article is dead on about the manufactoring loss and the region not being prepared.

As for downtown Dayton being, on average, dull at street level I refer posters to this thread

 

Pictures, graphs and diagrams speak for themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

^---Links not showing. (Edit: Oh wait, nevermind, DUH!)

Heck, I could write an article like that & make chicago seem like some back woods town in alabama!  He didn't bother to look at the growing industries or other fields where Dayton excels.