The American rust-belt is a geographical region centred aroun the Great Lakes that once was home to most of America's heavy industries such as steel, automobiles, machine tools, petrol-chemical refining, foundries, forges and machine shops. Most of this heavy industry has left America for the developing nations in Asia and Latin America, however, the remnants of abandoned steel mills and boarded up car factories are everywhere. Cities such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Toledo and Chicago are the major urban centres of this region. It was NOT an area where non-durable goods like textiles were manufactured in great abundance, so i doubt Manchester or the North West of England would equate. However, I believe the West Midlands or the North East might be our Rust-Belt. Which of those two regions fits best, do you think?
I'd go for South Wales. Though I'd say Sheffield, Teeside, Tyneside, Black Country and Glasgow are pretty hot contenders.
Black Country (historically of course)
Sheffield lost a lot of heavy industry, but it's recovered quite well. The former steel milling areas of scotland still look pretty desolate though imo.
There's some enormous post industrial slate tips in north wales, visitors sometime don't realise they're not natural hills.
South Yorkshire, the North East, or the West Midlands......It's a toss up.
The UK cities have recovered much better than cities like Detroit in the US, indeed Manchester, Leeds and Nottingham are probably better off than ever.
The North East has recovered the least though.
The Black Country
It's a dirt whole there tbh ^
Is Billy Elliot set in Durham? I'd guess there, because it was a community built around mining?
Yes, but is mining the same as manufacturing? No, mining is retrieving raw materials out of the earth. A Rust Belt is an area which includes mining, yes, because it normally is centred near heavy manufacturing, but an area that is exclusively devoted to mining without manufacturing I wouldn't call a Rust Belt city.
Rust Belt cities are cities associated with the manufacture of steel and products made from steel, such as motor cars, car parts, machine tools, etc. In Britain, the top contenders for such a designation, I think, would be Sheffield and the surrounding South Yorkshire industrial towns such as Rotherham; Birmingham and its satellite industrial towns in the surrounding West Midlands Black Country, such as Wolverhampton and West Bromwich; and maybe Middlesbrough and Redcar in the the North East of England. Any of these three (3) areas would get my vote for being the buckle of the British Rust Belt.
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