Columbus

While Cleveland and Cincinnati declined, Columbus grew—and the reason explains why some Midwest cities survive deindustrialization while others do not. Ohio's capital was founded in 1812 as a planned seat of government, deliberately placed at the geographic center of the state rather than on a river or lake. This geographic disadvantage in the industrial era became an advantage in the post-industrial one: Columbus never developed the heavy manufacturing monoculture that devastated its Ohio peers.

The state government and Ohio State University (the largest single-campus university in the United States, with 60,000+ students) provided economic anchors that do not relocate or go bankrupt. Insurance companies—Nationwide, State Auto, Grange Mutual—clustered around the regulatory capital. When manufacturing collapsed across the Rust Belt in the 1970s and 1980s, Columbus barely noticed because it had little manufacturing to lose.

Columbus's 850,000 city residents (2.1 million metro) make it the only major Ohio city still growing. Aggressive annexation—Columbus has expanded its boundaries more than 400% since 1950—captured suburban tax revenue that Cleveland and Cincinnati lost. Intel's $20 billion semiconductor fabrication plant in nearby New Albany (announced 2022) represents the largest single private-sector investment in Ohio history, positioning Columbus as a node in America's semiconductor reshoring strategy.

The biological parallel is instructive: Columbus is a generalist species that thrives in disturbed environments. While specialist industrial cities (Gary, Youngstown, Flint) collapsed when their niche disappeared, Columbus's diversified economy—government, education, insurance, logistics, retail (Abercrombie & Fitch, Bath & Body Works, and Wendy's are headquartered here)—provided resilience through redundancy. The city that was too boring for the industrial era became too stable to fail in the post-industrial one.