Cleveland Was Once a Top U.S. City — Then Everything Changed

Cleveland Was Once a Top U.S. City — Then Everything Changed

Cleveland was once one of America’s most important cities — a manufacturing powerhouse on Lake Erie, packed with industry, jobs, and growth. For a time, it was a true top-tier U.S. city with a booming middle class and the kind of economic momentum that felt permanent.

Then everything changed.

In this episode of Cityfall, we break down how Cleveland rose, what triggered its long decline, and why the collapse wasn’t one dramatic event — it was a chain reaction. As industry weakened, jobs disappeared, and population drained outward, Cleveland was left trying to maintain big-city infrastructure on a shrinking tax base. Neighborhoods emptied, services strained, and a feedback loop set in: fewer people meant less revenue, which meant weaker systems, which pushed even more people to leave.

We explore the turning points that shaped Cleveland’s modern story — including the city’s environmental infamy during the era of heavy industrial pollution, its financial breaking point in the late 1970s, and the decades of deindustrialization that hollowed out the city’s economic engine. But we also look at the complicated reality today: Cleveland has rebuilt parts of itself through major institutions, downtown reinvention, and new investment — while many neighborhoods still carry the weight of what was lost.

This isn’t a simple comeback story and it isn’t a doom story. It’s a blueprint for what happens when a city grows around one economic engine — and then that engine shuts off.

If you’re into history documentaries, Rust Belt stories, urban decline, American industry, and the rise and fall of cities, Cleveland’s story explains how great cities don’t always fall with a crash. Sometimes they fade — until the country forgets how powerful they once were.