Cleveland
Cuyahoga's 1969 fire symbolized industrial decline but also triggered EPA's founding; Cleveland Clinic now anchors $28B healthcare economy. Rust belt succession.
Cleveland exists because a river caught fire. Not once—the Cuyahoga burned at least thirteen times before the 1969 fire that finally shocked the nation into creating the EPA. That burning river became the symbol of industrial America's self-destruction, but it also explains why Cleveland was built here in the first place: the Cuyahoga's crooked 100-mile path connected Lake Erie to interior coal and iron ore deposits, making this spot the natural location for turning raw materials into steel.
Moses Cleaveland founded the city in 1796 at the river's mouth. The Ohio & Erie Canal (1827-1832) connected Cleveland to the Ohio River 308 miles south, dug by Irish and German immigrants through 146 lift locks. By the 1870s, John D. Rockefeller had founded Standard Oil in the industrial flats along the Cuyahoga—the same Lake Erie shipping and railroad access that carried ore and coal could carry refined petroleum. Cleveland became a processing node where resources converged, transformed, and shipped out.
The city's peak came in the 1950s, when one-third of jobs were manufacturing. Then the long decline: automation, globalization, deindustrialization. Cleveland has lost over 40% of its population since its peak. But here's what the rust belt narrative misses: per-capita GDP keeps growing even as population shrinks. The city has undergone metabolic transformation, not death.
Today, the Cleveland Clinic anchors a $28.19 billion healthcare economy, supporting 140,547 Ohio jobs. 'Eds and meds' now represents 20% of employment—the same proportion manufacturing once claimed. The Tremont and Ohio City neighborhoods gentrify while outer neighborhoods empty. It's the pattern of ecological succession: the old industrial forest burned, and a different ecosystem is growing in its place.
By 2026, Cleveland's question is whether healthcare and knowledge sectors can sustain a city built for industrial throughput. The Cuyahoga runs clean now—kayakers paddle where oil slicks once floated. But the infrastructure sized for a million people serves 360,000. Cleveland isn't dying; it's shrinking into a different shape.