Sean Safford. Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown: The Transformation of the Rust Belt.

Abstract

Why is it that some cities in the so-called American Rust Belt appear to have successfully weathered the crippling industrial declines of the 1980s, while other cities remain trapped within a cycle of infrastructural decay and population loss? Despite a push in the canon of social history to move "beyond the ruins" of deindustrialization, historians still seek a method to explore ways in which communities successfully or unsuccessfully economically remake themselves in the postindustrial era. Sean Safford, in Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown, utilizes social capital theory to conceptualize how leaders within societal networks, such as those within industry and civic organizations, ultimately shaped the reactions and resilience of the communities of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Youngstown, Ohio.