Grand Rapids has become a midwestern economic star generating industrial jobs
I lived in a rust belt city in for many years, and in recent years have been witnessing a slew of &quot;rust-belt renaissance&quot; articles pop up every now and then about how things are turning around in deindustrialized cities (Pittsburgh is often cited as a shining example of a city that has seen a turnaround).<p>These articles typically state something along the lines of the low COL (cost-of-living) luring young people back from coastal cities. Some even overstate their case quite a bit by projecting they&#x27;ll be the next Silicon Valley or startup hub. I wonder how folks here feel about such articles?<p>I can&#x27;t help but notice there&#x27;s some element of boosterism that misses a something fundamental. To be sure, it makes people who live in rust belt cities feel better about themselves (I was one of those people), but it doesn&#x27;t seem to really move the needle in attracting the very ambitious to these places. In my observation, the truly ambitious are insensitive to cost-of-living arguments.<p>Paul Graham wrote an article entitled &quot;Cities and Ambition&quot; [1] which speaks to this. It tracks with my observation that people at the top of their games tend to cluster, and are willing to suffer discomfort to live among their peers.<p>---<p>Some quotes:<p>&quot;How much does it matter what message a city sends? Empirically, the answer seems to be: a lot. You might think that if you had enough strength of mind to do great things, you&#x27;d be able to transcend your environment. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference. But if you look at the historical evidence, it seems to matter more than that. Most people who did great things were clumped together in a few places where that sort of thing was done at the time.&quot;<p>&quot;No matter how determined you are, it&#x27;s hard not to be influenced by the people around you. It&#x27;s not so much that you do whatever a city expects of you, but that you get discouraged when no one around you cares about the same things you do.&quot;<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;cities.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;cities.html</a>