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  • Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown: The Transformation of the Rust Belt
  • Nicole Bollinger
Sean Safford. Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown: The Transformation of the Rust Belt. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. Pp. xviii, 224. Charts, graphs, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, $29.95.)

Why is it that some cities in the so-called American Rust Belt appear to have successfully weathered the crippling industrial declines of the 1980s, while other cities remain trapped within a cycle of infrastructural decay and population [End Page 305] loss? Despite a push in the canon of social history to move “beyond the ruins” of deindustrialization, historians still seek a method to explore ways in which communities successfully or unsuccessfully economically remake themselves in the postindustrial era. Sean Safford, in Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown, utilizes social capital theory to conceptualize how leaders within societal networks, such as those within industry and civic organizations, ultimately shaped the reactions and resilience of the communities of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Youngstown, Ohio. In turn, Safford’s argument devises a new way of investigating economic and social histories that moves beyond the average declension narrative. However, he oversimplifies regional context; his assumption that Allentown and Youngstown are geographically similar misleads readers and, therefore, reveals a broad gap in the author’s work. However, due to the significant way that the author defends his claim using social capital theory, Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown contributes to the existing literature on postindustrialization.

Within the first chapter Safford introduces his readers to the common thread that links Allentown, Youngstown, and other American Rust Belt cities—fear of “ hollowing out ” and “[becoming] shells of their once prosperous pasts” (1). Basing his analysis in social capital theory, Safford argues the community leadership ultimately fueled that fear and, hence, generated the frameworks within which Allentown prospered and Youngstown stagnated. For instance, the author describes Allentown as a place where “ community” was defined by a solid employer/employee relationship, whereas in Youngstown “community” consisted of ethnic enclaves without bridges, such as economic wealth, to span the cultural gap. By discovering how the two communities developed, Safford’s explanation of social capital theory examines Allentown’s ability to overcome its fear, while Youngstown remained idle within its own socially and culturally stratified groups.

Following an introduction that explains the importance of the two cities’ social capital, the author discussed developmental trends within Allentown and Youngstown’s distinct social and economic identities. The author illustrates Allentown’s recovery since the collapse of steel and specifically asks “why outcomes in Allentown have been consistently better than in Youngstown in the last twenty-five years” (127). Where and why, Safford asks, did Allentown and Youngstown diverge on their economic paths? Safford contends that the organizations that formed within Youngstown and Allentown demonstrate how social leadership within industry and civic life drive the actions and reactions of a community (33). Hence, the author claims that the collapse of steel led to [End Page 306] stress upon these leaders and, due to their driving of the community, defined Allentown and Youngstown’s ability to overcome economic crisis (35–36).

Two economic decisions in the 1970s proved beneficial for Allentown. A proactive approach to the industrial shift of steel to locales where raw materials were cheaper and the improvement of deteriorating infrastructure eased the commuters’ drive from Allentown to Pennsylvania’s city of Philadelphia, as well as to New Jersey and New York City, which brought increased economic opportunity in a set of diverse markets beyond steel (72–74). Youngstown, on the other hand, formed around a “class-based cohesion,” meaning that the industrial and civic leadership were one and the same (92–95). The social capital of Youngstown, then, consisted of economic leaders who focused both on the management of the city and on the management of their companies out of fear that the community’s economy would fail (94–95). Allentown, however, was able to allow economic leaders to concentrate specifically upon the implications of the changing economy and the growing interconnectedness of the global markets (100–101). By the 1990s Allentown had united the Lehigh Valley...

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