Plant shutdowns in Canada and the United States from 1969 to 1984 led to an ongoing and ravaging industrial decline of the Great Lakes Region. Industrial Sunset offers a comparative regional analysis of the economic and cultural devastation caused by the shutdowns, and provides an insightful examination of how mill and factory workers on both sides of the border made sense of their own displacement. The history of deindustrialization rendered in cultural terms reveals the importance of community and national identifications in how North Americans responded to the problem. Based on the plant shutdown stories told by over 130 industrial workers, and drawing on extensive archival and published sources, and songs and poetry from the time period covered, Steve High explores the central issues in the history and contemporary politics of plant closings. In so doing, this study poses new questions about group identification and solidarity in the face of often dramatic industrial transformation.

A comparative regional analysis of the economic and cultural devastation caused by plant shutdowns in the Great Lakes Region, and an insightful examination of how mill and factory workers on both sides of the border made sense of their own displacement.

Abandoned factories, shipyards, warehouses, and refineries are features of many industrialized cities around the world. But despite their state of decline, these derelict sites remain vitally connected with the urban landscapes that surround them. In this enlightening new book, Alice Mah explores the experiences of urban decline and post-industrial change in three different community contexts: Niagara Falls, Canada/USA; Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK; and Ivanovo, Russia. Employing a unique methodological approach that combines ethnographic, spatial, and documentary methods, Mah draws on international comparisons of the landscapes and legacies of industrial ruination over the past forty years. Through this, she foregrounds the complex challenges of living with prolonged uncertainty and deprivation amidst socioeconomic change. This rich comparative study makes an essential contribution to far-reaching debates about the decline of manufacturing, regeneration, and identity, and will have important implications for urban theory and policy.

In Chicago's Industrial Decline Robert Lewis charts the city's decline since the 1920s and describes the early development of Chicago's famed (and reviled) growth machine. Beginning in the 1940s and led by local politicians, downtown business interest, financial institutions, and real estate groups, place-dependent organizations in Chicago implemented several industrial renewal initiatives with the dual purpose of stopping factory closings and attracting new firms in order to turn blighted property into modern industrial sites. At the same time, a more powerful coalition sought to adapt the urban fabric to appeal to middle-class consumption and residential living. As Lewis shows, the two aims were never well integrated, and the result was on-going disinvestment and the inexorable decline of Chicago's industrial space. By the 1950s, Lewis argues, it was evident that the early incarnation of the growth machine had failed to maintain Chicago's economic center in industry. Although larger economic and social forces—specifically, competition for business and for residential development from the suburbs in the Chicagoland region and across the whole United States—played a role in the city's industrial decline, Lewis stresses the deep incoherence of post-WWII economic policy and urban planning that hoped to square the circle by supporting both heavy industry and middle- to upper-class amenities in downtown Chicago.

While it is possible for economies to grow based on abundant land or natural resources, more often structural change-the shift of resources from low-productivity to high-productivity sectors-is the key driver of economic growth. Structural transformation is vital for Africa. The region's much-lauded growth turnaround since 1995 has been the result of making fewer economic policy mistakes, robust commodity prices, and new discoveries of natural resources. At the same time, Africa's economic structure has changed very little. Primary commodities and natural resources still account for the bulk of the region's exports. Industry is most often the leading driver of structural transformation. Africa's experience with industrialization over the past thirty years has been disappointing. In 2010, sub-Saharan Africa's average share of manufacturing value added in GDP was ten per cent, unchanged from the 1970s. Actually, the share of medium- and high-tech goods in manufacturing production has been falling since the mid-1990s. Per capita manufactured exports are less than ten per cent of the developing country average. Consequently, Africa's industrial transformation has yet to take place. This book presents results of comparative country-based research that sought to answer a seemingly simple but puzzling question: why is there so little industry in Africa? It brings together detailed country case studies of industrial policies and industrialization outcomes in eleven countries, conducted by teams of national researchers in partnership with international experts on industrial development. It provides the reader with the most comprehensive description and analysis available to date of the contemporary industrialization experience in low-income Africa. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.