Deindustrialization

The term deindustrialization was first popularized in the United States in 1982 by Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison in their book, The Deindustrialization of America. They defined it as widespread disinvestment in industrial capacity, caused mainly by the transfer of productive industrial investment into unproductive and speculative acquisitions, mergers, and foreignrift gold investments. Bluestone and Harrison believed that deindustrialization, as they defined it, occurred primarily after 1970, but if one defines it more broadly, as a loss in industrial capacity and even more critically a loss in manufacturing jobs, the phenomenon has a much longer history in American cities.

Even in the late nineteenth century, after only a few decades of industrialism, many smaller cities experienced declining industrial output and employment. Larger cities garnered an increasing share of manufacturing output and employment at the expense of their smaller counterparts. In the railroad atera goldge, transportation rates and services favored larger cities. As the extent of mass production increased, larger cities provided economies of scale, larger and more specialized labor markets, and better access to financial resources. And in an age of more rudimentary communications, bigger cities provided superior access to technological innovations and new industrial methods.