Progress!

[nedfumpkin]

I came across a promotional video from the 1940s for the city where I live.

http://vimeo.com/22031635

The funniest thing about it is that you can really see the great hope and potential for the city in this video. This is what 70 years of progress has accomplished.

The schools and university in this video continue to exist. All three are considered very good by most standards, and in fact, McMaster University is the source of medical advances all the time. '

The parks and recreational facilites also continue to exist. Not nearly as nice as they were in the 40s, but still there.

Everything else is GONE! A few exceptions below, but all of the stores are gone. In their place, a mall was built that is half empty all of the time. The "great" Market just got renovated and isn't much bigger than a large grocery store.

One train station is now a banquet hall, the other station is combined with the bus terminal and only accepts commuter trains occasionally during the day. No intercity rail from the downtown area. Still a lot of freight traffic because the busiest junction in North America is here.

National Steel Car continues to make great rail cars. The steel mills are both still here, althogh one is owned by Arcelor Mittal and relies on making car body steel, and the other is owned by US Steel which has effectively closed down and moved production to Pittsburgh. They are barely operating and the employees are currently locked out.

Otherwise...poof all gone. Westinghouse, International Harvestor, Otis, all of it, all gone. The port mainly accepts ships for the mills, and one odd fact, more mustard goes through our port than any other in the world because we are the mustard capital of the world.

That's what progress does I guess. It's funny to see how things were perceived back then, and really, we should be a very successful city. Although most industry was steel related, there was sufficient diversty in manufacturing to buffer market demands, but everything is gone.