Once the industrial hub of America, many cities famed for their steel, coal, or cars are now part of the Rust Belt. This region, mainly located across the Northeast and Midwest United States, is a shadow of its former self.

But some cities have been fighting back, determined to overcome economic hardships and rocketing crime rates. Read on as we explore the past and present of nine Rust Belt cities that have regained their shine. 

All dollar amounts in US dollars.

Built on the banks of the Scioto river, Ohio's capital city Columbus (pictured here in 1936) has both benefited and suffered from its proximity to water.

Its network of canals allowed merchants to ship goods easily during the 19th century, paving the way for strong industrial growth. Columbus was particularly known for its prosperous brewing and buggy industries, while factories located in the city included The Kilbourne & Jacobs Manufacturing Company, which was a major producer of horse-drawn trucks, wagons, and wheelbarrows.  

Columbus continued to experience economic growth throughout the 20th century, despite a monumental setback in the form of "The Great Flood of Columbus" in 1913. To prevent future flood damage, the authorities widened the Scioto and built a retaining wall along its banks. More construction followed after the ends of both World Wars – but in the 1970s, with Columbus's industry starting to stagnate, the city changed tack.

To make room for downtown developments such as office blocks and retail space, landmarks including the Union Station (pictured) and Neil House hotel were demolished. Out with the old, in with the new...

Providing a great example to other Rust Belt cities that have struggled to adapt to change and make themselves over, Columbus has embraced everything from solar energy to semiconductor manufacturing, which has helped to open up its economy and shield it from shocks.

As a result, the city was less impacted than others by the Great Recession and other downturns. And its future is looking bright, with tech giant Intel recently building two chip-making plants in the suburb of New Albany. As Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said at the time: "The Rust Belt is dead and the Silicon Heartland begins."

In February 2024, it was announced that work on the two plants had been pushed back, with a completion date of 2026 now on the cards.

Pittsburgh, shown here in 1902, first emerged as an economic powerhouse in the late 1700s.

With a prime location in the middle of one of America's major coalfields and an increase in inland trade during the War of 1812 which meant goods flowed into Pittsburgh from all four directions, the city was a recipe for commercial success.

First, it was dubbed "Iron City," then "Steel City" – a moniker it would retain until the collapse of the American steel industry in the 1970s.

The deindustrialization of America hit Pittsburgh hard. At its peak, the city's unemployment rate was around 17%, which is hardly surprising when you consider the number of steelworkers in Pittsburgh had been slashed from 90,000+ to around 44,000 by 1980.

But while the roaring steel industry had brought economic prosperity to the region, it had also made the city so polluted that street lamps reportedly had to be lit in the middle of the day. Pittsburgh desperately needed a brighter future in more ways than one...

To reverse the city's decline, those in charge decided to remarket it as a tech hub, supporting Pittsburgh's higher education establishments to nurture talent and foster innovation.

For instance, Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute has earned Pittsburgh the nicknames "Robot City" and "Roboburgh" and helped make it the hub of America's self-driving vehicle industry.

In fact, the industry is so strong in the city and its surrounding area that the Pittsburgh Robotics Network was launched in 2016 with the goal of "growing local investment, attracting new talent to the region, and support[ing] local suppliers and companies" (to quote Pittsburgh Region).

Sometimes described as "America's first boomtown," Rochester got rich after the completion of the Erie Canal aqueduct in 1823, which connected the city to the Hudson River. This made it much easier to transport goods, and Rochester was initially known for being the largest producer of flour in the US.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, other industries such as shoemaking, garments, and film photography fueled the local economy. Eastman Kodak, Xerox, and various other names all built factories in the city. The headquarters of the Eastman Kodak Company is shown here.

However, the number of traditional manufacturing jobs in the Upstate New York city plummeted in the 1980s, and production facilities began to shutter.

To make matters worse, Kodak, which had long been the city's largest employer, hit troubled waters due to increased competition from other brands and the rise of digital photography. Although it didn't officially declare bankruptcy until 2012, it had been laying off staff in their droves since the 1990s.

Officials turned their attention to developing hi-tech manufacturing opportunities and wooing innovative businesses to the city, both of which helped repurpose Rochester as a center for emerging industries.

These days, the types of businesses that operate there range from solar energy providers to cybersecurity firms and agritech companies – and the rebirth of Rochester has worked wonders for the city's economy and job figures.

Back in 2009, the unemployment rate stood at a high of 9.3%. Bar the sudden spike in joblessness caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, that figure has fallen steadily since then and currently stands at around 3.6%.

From brewing to printing, Milwaukee, Wisconsin became a hotbed of industry in the late 1800s.

This reputation was strengthened in the 20th century thanks to the arrival of major companies such as Harley-Davidson, which was founded in Milwaukee in 1903 and remains one of the city's biggest employers to this day, with around 2,320 workers (according to Discover Milwaukee).

The image here shows a woodcut of Milwaukee from the banks of Lake Michigan in the 1870s. A printing house can be seen in the center; by 1928, around 2,500 people were employed in the city's printing and publishing industry.

However, like other Rust Belt cities Milwaukee began shedding manufacturing jobs in large numbers during the 1980s and 1990s.

As a result, the city's once-vibrant downtown seriously declined, with crime and poverty surging as businesses shut and wealthier residents departed for the suburbs. 

Pre-COVID, unemployment in Milwaukee peaked at 11% in 2010. Bar the pandemic spike of 16.5% in April 2020, the city's unemployment rate has fallen steadily over the past decade or so, even hitting a record low in 2022.

Though it's crept up since then, it's currently hovering around the national average of 3.7%. The secret to Milwaukee's new-found success? The revitalization of its downtown area (pictured), which has been experiencing a construction boom that has generated job after job.

As the home of the first gasoline pump, refrigerator, and video game console, Fort Wayne has an illustrious industrial past.

The city had the twin benefits of being a leader in both manufacturing and transport, gaining prevalence as a stop on the Lincoln Highway and receiving its first municipal airport in the early 1920s. In the wake of the World Wars, Fort Wayne continued to prosper – but American deindustrialization came at a hefty price...

Fort Wayne is estimated to have lost around 30,000 industrial jobs in the 1980s.

Compounding the loss of employment as industry declined across the United States, a flood hit Fort Wayne in 1982. The damage cost more than $56 million to repair, which equates to around $177 million in 2024.

It was a devastating blow to a city already struggling with increased crime and the collapse of many businesses.

During the 1990s, investment poured into Fort Wayne's neglected downtown area, with renovations and expansions of the city's art museum, public library, and more. As the neighborhood revitalized, crime numbers began to drop, which in turn attracted more investment. 

Tourism is bolstering the economy even further, with a series of recently completed developments drawing visitors from far and wide. These include The Landing, a hip revamp of Fort Wayne's historic city center, as well the riverside-set Promenade Park. 

Cleveland's fortunes were founded on steel, iron, and oil. The city's population more than doubled in the decade from 1860 to 1870 – by which point it had become the birthplace of Standard Oil  – and its economic boom continued well into the 20th century.

From the early 1900s, various then-prominent automakers were based in Cleveland, including Winton, which manufactured the first car driven across the US. These booming businesses prompted yet more immigration, with the rapidly expanding population earning it the nickname "Sixth City," as it was the sixth largest city in America at the time. (Today, it ranks 54th.)

Adding to the prestige, Cleveland's Terminal Tower was briefly the second tallest building in the world, outside New York City.

But trouble hit hard in the form of the Great Depression. While some of the cities on this list escaped the worst of its effects, Cleveland was said to have been "hurt more by the Depression than any other city in the United States," according to the investment banker Cyrus Eaton at the time.

Around half of the city's workforce lost their jobs. World War II offered an unprecedented boon as Cleveland became a major hub of artillery manufacturing. For a while, the city's fortunes were renewed. But new challenges arrived in the form of the 1980s recession, which brought with it the closure of the city's steel mills and an unemployment rate of 13.8%.

The journey to deindustrialization is never an easy ride, but Cleveland has been navigating its economic transition with aplomb.

Under the mayorship of the late George Voinovich, the city emerged from default in the late 1980s. In the decades since, it's been prioritizing "anchor institutions" such as hospitals and universities, and the development of knowledge industries. The healthcare sector has been especially beneficial for its economy, with the prestigious Cleveland Clinic one of its major employers.

At the same time, the city's cultural scene has boomed. This, and the exploding restaurant scene, have helped put Cleveland back on the map. Its revival has been so successful that the city has become a blueprint of model renewal for other former industrial hubs around the world, including Preston in the north of England.

Charleston, the capital city of West Virginia, initially made its money from salt drilling – an industry that relied heavily on enslaved labor – and the discovery of the first natural gas well in 1815.

The city's wealth of natural resources, including coal, meant that many steel, timber, and glass companies relocated to Charleston in the 20th century. The expansion of the railroad made it a particularly desirable spot. 

However, like the rest of West Virginia, Charleston saw most of its coal mines and chemical plants, once the drivers of its economy, go out of business. According to the most recent census data, its population has almost halved since the 1960s. Unemployment climbed above 10% in the early 1990s and spiked again in 2010 at 8.8% as job opportunities fell back in the ailing Rust Belt city.

To make matters worse, one of Charleston's surviving coal processing plants spilled 10,000 gallons of toxic substances into the Elk River in 2014, leaving around 300,000 West Virginians without water and resulting in a costly clean-up. The final insult in a decade of hardship, the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, with the unemployment rate soaring to 17.3% that April.

Charleston's population has never climbed back to its peak, but it's not all doom and gloom for the capital. Today, the city is quietly repositioning itself as a haven for hi-tech companies. This has been buoyed by the West Virginia Regional Technology Park, which bills itself as a "global leader in research and innovation." On-site scientists oversee everything from chemical research to "next-generation 3D printing."

Charleston has also been working on expanding its healthcare institutions and boosting tourism by promoting the city's rapidly gentrifying heritage districts, cultural and music festivals, and wealth of leisure amenities. Despite the population decrease, these efforts to overhaul the city for the 21st century are bearing fruit, with unemployment at around 3.8% as of December 2023.

The quintessential Rust Belt city, Detroit was a booming, bustling metropolis in the 1950s and early 1960s.

The locus of America's buoyant auto industry, "Motor City" boasted the country's highest-per-capita income thanks to an abundance of well-paid jobs, with its residents enjoying equally high living standards. But the glory days weren't to last...

Assembly plants began closing in the late 1960s. The spike in oil prices the following decade and competition from foreign carmakers from the 1980s onwards almost finished off the city's auto industry.

Meanwhile, skyrocketing crime levels prompted an exodus of more affluent residents and businesses to the suburbs, leaving behind a dangerous inner city blighted by decay. In 2009, unemployment peaked at a massive 17%. Four years later, starved of tax revenue, the city filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as it forced the authorities to collaborate with the private and philanthropic sectors to secure investment. While the sun may have set on Detroit's automotive past, the city is now regarded as a model for urban renewal. Detroit is awash with gleaming regeneration projects, including Ford's refurb of the emblematic Michigan Central Station.

What's more, jobs have become plentiful, with the unemployment rate in the greater Detroit area down to 3.3% in December 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Albany was a mass-production powerhouse through the 19th and early 20th centuries, famed, among other things, for making some of the best stoves and furnaces in the world.

Lumber was also a prime export; at peak, there were around 4,000 sawmills in Albany, which was also home to the nation's largest lumber market. 

Manufacturing began to decline in the 1940s, and by the late 1990s, factories were thin on the ground in the NY capital.

Unemployment pre-COVID peaked in 2012. By 2014, only 5.8% of people living in the metro area were employed in manufacturing.

Albany's reinvention can be traced back to the late 1990s when a group of stakeholders, led by New York's then-governor George Pataki, came up with a proposal to revive the sleepy city and its lethargic economy by turning it into a hotbed of innovation. 

Now at the center of the state's Tech Valley, Albany is a nanotech and chip-making triumph. It's home to the most advanced nanotech research facility in existence, as well as the world's second-largest semiconductor plant.

On top of that, it's also landed multibillion-dollar investments from IBM and Intel. This boom has resulted in a sharp uptick in hi-tech manufacturing jobs and a decreasing unemployment rate, which fell to a near-record low of 2.6% in 2022, down from around 5% in the early 1990s and around 7.5% in 2012.

Now take a look at America's biggest gold rushes in pictures