The decline of the city is a viscous cycle: people and businesses leave (in our case due to deindustrialization), this causes a decrease in tax revenues and the quality of the environment, this leads to tax increases and cuts to services that result in the abandonment of even more people and businesses. The decline of cities cannot be narrowed down to just one factor, but we can identify the main influences. Decline is the combination of many different economic and social factors that can transform a once-vibrant metropolis into a desolate and dangerous wasteland. Pennsylvania is where this country began, the place where the Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and years later the Constitution. The largest cities in Pennsylvania are Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Once thriving cities, they now face a declining population. Various popular efforts and government projects aim to reverse this situation, but I think we need to go back and see where this decline began. How can we develop solutions to our modern problems without looking back to the past to see what history has done to lead to these problems? Pittsburgh was once a thriving city, its decline slowly began during the mid-20th century. Their prosperity was the result of their location in the “Rust Belt”. The “Rust Belt” included all the cities that were critical to American industry during the 19th and 20th centuries. Coal- and iron-rich states were the steel powerhouses of the industrial revolution. These states included Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. The large cities of the “Rust Belt” were Chicago, Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh. During the Civil War Andrew Carnegie built Pittsburgh's first steel mills to meet the demand for weapons, and throughout the world... middle of paper... there are plenty of uneducated workers who would benefit from a simple job. If we brought manufacturing back to the city, it would prosper again and eliminate unemployment. Looking back at Pennsylvania we see that, despite all efforts, Pittsburgh is in decline and Philadelphia is experiencing population growth, although its growth rate has slowed. Both of these cities have been heavily impacted by the economic shift from manufacturing to technology. This transition from the “Rust Belt” to the “Sun Belt” ruined the economy and left everyone unemployed. Later those who could move left the city and moved to the suburbs where there were jobs. After white flight, these two cities degraded into cities of crime and poor education. This doesn't help engage people; recently the city was conquered by a movement of young idealists determined to save their beloved city.