The Economic Innovation Group recently published the Distressed Communities Index. As the most distressed largecity in the United States, Cleveland dove into a Rust Belt shame spiral. The EIG managed to re-light the river fire. The Mistake on the Lake burns again. That's too bad, because the DCI is deeply flawed.
While the DCI does not measure population change, such data can help explain why places where manufacturing once blossomed seem to rule the bottom of every list. Such cities tend to be small in terms of geographic area. Wealth suburbanized relatively early in steel powerhouse Pittsburgh, effectively shutting the door on the expansion of the municipal boundaries. Worse, the more successful the manufacturing economy, the greater the sprawl of prosperity.
[For more of this story, written by Jim Russell, go to http://www.psmag.com/business-...ssed-not-communities]
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