A Nice Place to Visit: Tourism and Urban Revitalization in the Postwar Rustbelt by Aaron Cowan (review)

The late twentieth century was an era of desperation for many older rustbelt cities as they struggled to find an antidote to the debilitating conditions sapping their economic strength and reducing their populations. Searching for solutions, city leaders turned increasingly to tourism as the source of a much-needed business boost. Convention centers, new hotels, sports facilities, and festival marketplaces supposedly would rebrand the aging hubs as places to gather, spend money, and have fun. In A Nice Place to Visit, Aaron Cowan examines this tourist initiative in four rustbelt cities—Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore. His cogent, well-researched account sheds valuable light on the origins and evolution of the urban investment in tourism.

Cowan begins by briefly tracing the history of urban decline and the search for remedies in the four cities. He then focuses on a single aspect of the tourism initiative as it pertains to one of his rustbelt centers. Concentrating on Cincinnati, he describes the rise of convention-oriented chain hotels. The locally owned hotels of the pre-World War II era had served not only as places of lodging but as social centers and sources of community pride. Their opulent ballrooms hosted local galas, and their luxurious lobbies and restaurants were places to meet and negotiate political and business deals. Cowan portrays the chain outlets with their standardized accommodations as having far less of a role in the community. They were in the city but not of the city.

Cowan next examines the development of St. Louis’s convention center. By the early 1970s, St. Louis leaders were desperate to boost the fortunes of their flagging downtown. Tourism seemed the elixir that would restore vitality. Cowan emphasizes the significance of race in the battle to win voter approval for a bond issue to finance construction of the convention venue. The city’s African Americans supposedly would benefit little from a mammoth facility hosting out-of-towners and enhancing the business interests of white downtown leaders. Yet Cowan possibly overstates the race factor. In the 1972 bond issue election the convention center proposal won the support of 75 percent of those casting ballots, securing approval from 82 percent of the voters in the wards with African American majorities. In other words, an overwhelming majority of blacks endorsed construction of a downtown convention center and were more positive toward the project than the white electorate. The divide between the white downtown business elite and the African American neighborhoods was perhaps not as significant as Cowan implies. The election returns seem to suggest a biracial consensus for increased convention business.

Having examined Cincinnati hotels and the St. Louis convention center, Cowan proceeds to discuss the construction of Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium and its role in rehabilitating the image of the deindustrializing Steel City. Many scholars have questioned whether public sector investment in sports facilities have produced the economic rewards claimed by promoters of such projects. Cowan recognizes the limited economic benefits of stadiums and arenas, yet in an evenhanded discussion he explains how the new stadium and its winning baseball and football teams gilded the image of the city in the 1970s. Both in the eyes of outsiders and local residents, Pittsburgh no longer seemed such a loser city. It succeeded on the playing fields, and this winning reputation translated into a more positive image that certainly did no harm to the rustbelt hub.

Baltimore’s Harborplace festival marketplace was equally successful in burnishing the image of an aging metropolis. The Harborplace retail complex raised city spirits, won much-needed positive publicity for Baltimore, and proved a financial success. Though Cowan concludes that it evolved into a tourist trap, it like the Three Rivers Stadium sent an upbeat message to the American media that had previously viewed Baltimore as dead.

Throughout his investigation of tourist development in the urban rustbelt, Cowan offers valuable insights into the revitalization...