My thanks to Jim Russell over at Burgh Diasporah for turning me on to Richard Longworth’s new book, Caught In The Middle. While I haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing yet, I did take the shortcut through the index to find out what Longworth had to say about Cleveland.
A couple of excerpts should whet your appetite for what appears to be an extremely trenchant assessment of our region’s struggle to regain its footing in the age of globalism:
“A century ago, Cleveland was one of the three or four richest cities in America, the home of the Rockefellers, an industrial powerhouse….Euclid Avenue once ranked with Fifth Avenue in New York as the most elegant street in the country: when the Rockefellers and the Hannas lived there, it was known as Millionaire’s Row. Cleveland used to be the fifth-biggest American city; now it’s thirty ninth….
“What happened? ‘We stopped innovating,’ Ronn Richard, the president of The Cleveland Foundation told me. ‘We missed the IT revolution. We missed it because we were so fat, dumb and happy with our prowess in heavy manufacturing.’ …
Longworth continues: “In all my travels through the Midwest, Cleveland was the only place, big or small, that seemed heedless of the global challenge. Only 4 percent of its population is foreign-born, in an era that demands new blood; the city government isn’t sure it wants more. One of its leading economists told me, ‘You can’t kill manufacturing–that’s stupid,’ but manufacturing is fleeing and cities need new ways to support themselves. In an era of global connectivity, only one non-stop per day, to England, links Cleveland to the world. The first-rate Cleveland Clinic is expanding, but every Midwestern city is building up its health industry: few expect it to carry the city’s economy.”
And that, dear readers, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Of course it isn’t all doom and gloom, but it does highlight a key missing element in our economic development efforts: no matter how much money and effort we pour into healthcare, IT, advanced energy, materials and new approaches to manufacturing–all necessary but none sufficient components for success–so long as we ignore the need to attract more immigrants to the region (does the name Richard Herman ring a bell anyone?), so long as we try to shut out the realities of what it means to be a player in the *global* marketplace, we will always find ourselves caught in the middle and just muddling through.