Reimagining the Rust Belt: South Bend, Indiana, and The Citizen Project

Abstract

In his seminal book American Vertigo, which retraces Tocqueville’s journey across the United States, Bernard-Henri Lévy tries to explicate America’s uncertainty and envision the nation’s future. Lévy finds that the evolution of the nation’s insecurity varies greatly from place to place. The distinctive history, diverse needs, and immediate concerns of distinct areas of the country often obscure Lévy’s hunt for broader national ideals. The people he encounters closely identify with their cities, often displaying the local fervor and pride of ancient Spartans or Athenians. Like their predecessors, their collective attention and action is based around their homes, their local involvement, their “citizenship” as intimately tied to their cities. Although the term is no longer used that way, for many Americans, being a “citizen” is often enacted as it once was, based on the word’s Latin etymology indicating a pronounced affiliation with one’s city, one’s smallscale community. The city of South Bend, Indiana, has been included in Newsweek’s list of America’s “Dying Cities,” as well as Money Under 30’s “Best Cities in America for Young People to Get Rich.” The Economist maligned it as a “company town without a company” yet praised the area for “reinvention in the rust belt” (V. v. B.). The crisis of identity inherent in these seemingly absurd inconsistencies was not only confusing to outsiders but to South Bend residents as well. Viewing itself as a city in crisis with pockets of hopeful development, defined the area’s narrative and, therefore, limited local remedies available. As a city that had experienced numerous calami-