Hello, hello, HELLO! Welcome to this week's Yellow River Chronicles. During the staff wanderings of the Great American Midwest last month, we spent some time in Youngstown, Ohio.
The ancestral home of a member of the YRC, Youngstown has the honor of being named by Forbes magazine as the Fourth Best City in America to raise a family (http://www.forbes.com/pictures/eddf45gihi/no-4-youngstown-ohio/).
Former home of the "Youngstown Tuneup", Youngstown is one of the "vanishing American cities" in the Rust Belt that were once dependent on the U.S. steel and automotive industries and are now trying to positively adapt to "de-population".
A brief history back story. As went the American steel industry, so went Youngstown. This from www.answers.com:
Did the Chinese Do it?? And nooooo, the steel industry did NOT move to the People's Republic. China actually alternates between exporting and importing steel. The largest exporter of steel in the world is...Japan!
But More About Us: But enough about dull old global economics. Your hard-working and far-traveling YRC staff left the banks of the extremely polluted Huang Pu river in the city of Shanghai and wandered to the shores of the mildly polluted Mahoning River in the city of Youngstown, Ohio.
And there in that city, we found, along with fresh air and blue skies, four things that we would not find in the mega-city of Shanghai, no matter how hard we looked.
The Four Things that You Will Never Find in Shanghai that are in Youngstown, Ohio:
Number One: Inexpensive real estate! Housing is nearly the most expensive in the world in Shanghai, while in Youngstown, your housing dollar goes very, very far.
In fact, about 43 percent of Youngstown's land is vacant; and, as of January of last year, Youngstown had 4,500 vacant structures throughout the city. You get a lot of house for your yuan, there.
The ancestral home of a member of the YRC, Youngstown has the honor of being named by Forbes magazine as the Fourth Best City in America to raise a family (http://www.forbes.com/pictures/eddf45gihi/no-4-youngstown-ohio/).
Former home of the "Youngstown Tuneup", Youngstown is one of the "vanishing American cities" in the Rust Belt that were once dependent on the U.S. steel and automotive industries and are now trying to positively adapt to "de-population".
A brief history back story. As went the American steel industry, so went Youngstown. This from www.answers.com:
When the war ended, steelmakers wanted to roll back union gains that the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt had forced the industry to accept, but the USWA had grown too big to destroy. Between 1946 and 1959, the USWA struck five times in an effort to win higher wages and more control over workplace conditions for its members. Each of these strikes shut down the industry.
As a result of these disputes, America's steelworkers were among the highest paid manufacturing employees in the country. The cost of these wage gains contributed to the collapse of the industry in subsequent decades.
Foreign competition also contributed to the industry's decline. Countries like Japan and Germany first became major players in the international steel market during the 1960s. Later on, countries like Brazil and South Korea would break into the American market.
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| Youngstown Population digits |
Although friends of the American steel industry would often complain of unfair competition from abroad, foreign producers' use of new technology and the failure of American steelmakers to innovate also explain these developments. For example, two Austrian firms developed the Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) in 1952. This process, which used pure oxygen as the only fuel in the furnace, was much more efficient than the then-traditional open hearth method. No major American steelmaker adopted this technology until 1957. U.S. Steel, still the largest firm in the industry, did not commission its first BOF unit until 1964.Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/iron-and-steel-industry#ixzz2B2x6QAhK
Did the Chinese Do it?? And nooooo, the steel industry did NOT move to the People's Republic. China actually alternates between exporting and importing steel. The largest exporter of steel in the world is...Japan!
But More About Us: But enough about dull old global economics. Your hard-working and far-traveling YRC staff left the banks of the extremely polluted Huang Pu river in the city of Shanghai and wandered to the shores of the mildly polluted Mahoning River in the city of Youngstown, Ohio.
And there in that city, we found, along with fresh air and blue skies, four things that we would not find in the mega-city of Shanghai, no matter how hard we looked.
The Four Things that You Will Never Find in Shanghai that are in Youngstown, Ohio:
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| Lots of house for the money |
In fact, about 43 percent of Youngstown's land is vacant; and, as of January of last year, Youngstown had 4,500 vacant structures throughout the city. You get a lot of house for your yuan, there.
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| A kilo of the ham, please... |
Number Two: Excellent cold cuts. Let's be honest, people, Chinese cold cuts are an unearthly shade of pink and taste like recycled Barbie Dolls. Youngstown, with its Italian/Polish/German heritage, has an EPIC number of lunch meats. The legendary (wait for it, Youngstown buddies) Chipped-Chopped ham is no widely available, but memories remain.
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| Note the blue skies of Ohio... |
Number Three: Great doughnuts and tasty cop coffee. Sadly, there are no great donut (see sign) shops in the 24 million strong international powerhouse that is Shanghai. In tiny Youngstown, you can find some of the best 'nuts in the world. And a cup of java runs 89 cents at the Plaza. Find that in the "Hai...
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| The lunch special is lasagna |
Number Four: DINERS!! Because the restaurant scene solidified sometime around the closing of the steel plants, Youngstown has many excellent diners, with all the homemade "cobler" you could want, served by waitresses who call you "honey". Try and find that in Shanghai, unless...well, let's not go there... Let's have some of the meatloaf or maybe another Turkey Manhattan, please...
But we do hope you will come back for a second or third helping of the Yellow River Chronicles next week. See ya then!
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