Frostbelt Success Story

Stimulated by the 1970 and especially the 1980 census, numerous writers have delineated the movement to suburbs and to the sunbelt of people and businesses. They have noted the deleterious consequences of that shift for the depleted central cities, especially in the frostbelt, and rarefy argue that the trend will change. This article examines the various types of efforts made by cities to improve their futures. It discusses the wide range of recent successes of one frostbelt city, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, suggests causes of those achievements, and weighs the degree to which it might serve as a model The article argues that 1980 may come to be recognized not as the beginning of the end for older cities but as the high-water mark against which a countermovement might be measured

Census · Countermovement · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Futures contract · Political science · Population · Sociology · Demography · Urbanization and City Planning