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Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown: The Transformation of the Rust Belt, by Sean Safford. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. 212pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780674031760.
With the advent of "post-industrial society" now almost half a century upon us, the lessons of this wrenching economic transition still elude scholars and the higher circles of business, labor, and civic institutions. Much of the industrial rust belt teeters precipitously as the United States now faces what many consider its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But for Sean Safford of the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, there is hope for economic and civic renewal in the rust belt and the United States in general. Safford argues that the fate of two industrial cities - Youngstown, Ohio and Allentown, Pennsylvania - can be explained by the nature of social networks and how they functioned at critical historical points. Allentown's business elite activated social capital on behalf of "community building" whereas Youngstown's business elite waged class struggle. Predictably, the post-industrial transition in Allentown has been far more successful than in Youngstown.
Safford's institutionalist perspective focuses on the relationship of economic actors and the civic spheres through which they participate. He argues that because Allentown's economic and civic networks were distinct, though still interconnected, "brokering organizations" were able to create and sustain crucial bridges that provided channels of information and communication between business and civic leaders. This enabled elites...