6. Pittsburgh ain’t bad lately and has reinvented itself to some extent.
8. South Bend has some very nice spots and very affordable. The RV industry is dead but Northern Indiana has re-invented it self several times. If all the English leave the Amish will be happy to buy the land and start farming.
Yeah, we hear that all the time. Pittsburgh is the poster-child up here in Buffalo for what a dying city can accomplish -- and it's only fair to say that Buffalo, too, has reinvented itself "to some extent".
The fact remains that fewer and fewer people want to live in either town. Their reinvention has consisted largely in attracting wealthy, inner-city liberals who work for government, in education (same thing) or the law (ditto).
Pittsburgh's, Buffalo's and Cleveland's touted rebirths are nothing but the product of government money and the clustering of people who work in it. They no longer create wealth -- they consume it. And they're getting damned good at it, too.