How Struggling Dayton, Ohio, Reveals the Chasm Among American Cities
I was taken aback by this portrait of Dayton in crisis -- mainly because I grew up in the Dayton area in the 50s and 60s. Back then Dayton was used by New York ad agencies to stand in for typical, prosperous Middle America. Then, long after Kettering and the Wright brothers, Dayton was still doing more than OK.
An excerpt:
Image: A Chinese company paying much lower wages than the GM plant it is replacing opens in Moraine, Ohio, right outside Dayton.
The irony for Dayton is that it knows the value of innovation clusters as well as anywhere. In the early decades of the last century, the city was home not only to the Wright brothers, but to lesser known inventors like Charles Kettering, who is credited with the electrical starting motor, among many automotive advances. The difference in the industrial age was that the manufacturing that flowed from those advances could be done just about anywhere with manpower, raw materials and transportation access. Today, manufacturing is typically done overseas, while the wealth accumulates in the hub cities where the intellectual property originated.
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