rust belt

Representatives from a handful of the country's "fastest-dying cities" met recently in Dayton, Ohio to try to figure out how they could revive their economies and reverse the decline that has been slowly strangling them of jobs, money and people.

Smart City talks with grass roots and civic leaders about how to revitalize flagging Rust Belt economies.

As Time Magazine observes, Detroit is the icon of the failing American city, but 'vast swaths of it don't look like a city at all.' Some say 'missing teeth' of Detroit make it a prime candidate to infill appropriately, and 'right-size'.

Amid the recession, industrial towns in the Rust Belt have been forced to evolve as jobs dry up. But this is nothing new for the region, where towns have been re-imagining their economies for decades. NPR reports.

Mayor John Fetterman of Braddock, PA struggles with the challenges of reviving a former steel town that has lost 90% of its peak population.