For decades, the distressed cities of the Rust Belt have been symbols of deindustrialization and postindustrial decay, their troubles cast as the inevitable outcome of economic change. The debate about why the fortunes of cities such as Detroit have fallen looms large over questions of social policy. In Manufacturing Decline, Jason Hackworth offers a powerful critique of the role of Rust Belt cities in American political discourse, arguing that antigovernment conservatives capitalized on—and perpetuated—these cities’ misfortunes by stoking racial resentment.

Hackworth traces how the conservative movement has used the imagery and ideas of urban decline since the 1970s to advance their cause. Through a comparative study of shrinking Rust Belt cities, he argues that the rhetoric of the troubled “inner city” has served as a proxy for other social conflicts around race and class. In particular, conservatives have used images of urban decay to craft “dog-whistle” messages to racially resentful whites, garnering votes for the Republican Party and helping justify limits on local autonomy in distressed cities. The othering of predominantly black industrial cities has served as the basis for disinvestment and deprivation that exacerbated the flight of people and capital. Decline, Hackworth contends, was manufactured both literally and rhetorically in an effort to advance austerity and punitive policies. Weaving together analyses of urban policy, movement conservatism, and market fundamentalism, Manufacturing Decline highlights the central role of racial reaction in creating the problems American cities still face.

"Timely reading for troubled times...a sturdy exploration of a continuing problem." - Kirkus Reviews

"Throughout Manufacturing Decline, he demonstrates how even the most well-meaning plans maintain the austerity structures that became prevalent in the last half-century. These have immediate and long-lasting effects on the black populations of Rust Belt cities." - Cleveland Review of Books

"In this well-researched, data-driven book, Jason Hackworth makes a persuasive case that the devastating demographic and fiscal declines that have turned once-thriving rust-belt cities into quasi-wastelands were not simply the result
of impersonal market forces or the supposedly spendthrift policies of left-wing mayors, but were the predictable, if not always intended, result of neoliberal nostrums such as ‘right-sizing.'" - Survival

"When you put this book down, you leave with a powerful understanding of the forces and whose choices made the Rust Belt what it is today." - Metropole

"Manufacturing Decline is an invitation to a long overdue discussion, and I hope that urban sociologist, urban geographers,
scholars of race, students of American political development, and others show up." - American Journal of Sociology

"A valuable addition to the shrinking cities literature and should be required reading for anyone interested in the forces that contributed to, and continue to perpetuate, decline across the American Rust Belt." - Journal of Urban Affairs