The Las Vegas Sun explores how their one-industry town can avoid the fate of Detroit and be like Pittsburgh, which reinvented itself after steel collapsed.
Their major conclusions, after asking economists and development experts mainly from the Rust Belt
Get your head out of the sand. Pretending the problem isn’t there won’t help.
You’ve got a good thing — now build on it. Take your best industries and make them better. Detroit didn’t.
Build a culture of education. This is crucial.
Laissez faire isn’t always the answer. Pittsburgh has had way less foreclosures than Cleveland, probably because their lending laws are stricter – and enforced.
Not just a place to work, a place to live. Cleveland tried to stop urban flight by building sports stadiums and the Rock and Roll Museum. Pittsburgh took abandoned buildings and turned them into multi-use business parks and residences, which helped to bring college-educated young people back.
A civic culture that will build for the future. The politics needs to be clean.
This is superb journalism, read the whole thing.
These days that can be applied pretty much anywhere.