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Originally Posted by LMich
Got to disagree again, slightly. While industrial, Lansing isn't anywhere near a Gary or Hammond in terms of how much it counted on industry.
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I was using those as extreme examples. Flint, Hammond, Gary, few places were as industrialized as these areas in terms of how big a segment they were of the local economy.
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I don't think Lansing fits too highly into the category of genuinely "one-industry" towns, though. The cities economy has literally been split pretty evenly between state, auto, and higher education for many, many decades, now. I just never got the feeling in Lansing that I would get in a place like Dayton, Flint, Youngstown, etc...
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You're right, Lansing isn't quite as extreme as those other cities. I'm happy that's the case. MSU and the Capitol (and maybe LCC to some degree) are the few that things Lansing has going for it.
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That said, Lansing is definitely not a traditionally "pretty" town. But, it has to do more with the fact that it was never supposed to be in the first place then the fact that it declined industrially like the other mentioned cities. Lansing developed and looked the way it does because more than anything else it was nothing more than a Michigan frontier town, even for many years after the capital was moved, here. Hell, when the current state capitol building was built here, there was literally a pig farm where the current city hall is right off capitol square.
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You're right, Lansing was a frontier town for a long time. One could argue that was the case up until around 1900, but most of what's in Lansing now was built as a result of R.E. Olds and auto manufacturing. So, yah, Lansing's case is unique with a long history as a backwoods frontier town, but I still think it qualifies as a post-industrial town.