Rusting Bodies: De‐Industrialization, Decay and the Making of a Biomedical Corridor

ABSTRACT This article examines Northeast Ohio's transformation from an industrial hub, once known as the rubber capital of the world, into a “biomedical corridor,” which has been experienced as particularly disruptive by community members. This disruption stems largely from the loss of employment and the emergence of new forms of racial inequality that directly affect both emotional and physical well‐being. I theorize decay as a form of vitalism, representing the affective experience of unemployment, the experience of policing, the movement of crime, environmental effects of privatization and industrial decline, the physical decay of households, and the difficulty of holding families together. Furthermore, I explore how the experience of decay unfolds in the shift from an industrial economy to a privatized biomedical corridor, as residents confront the cumulative effects of urban displacement, waste, aging, and chronic illness amid the absence of meaningful employment opportunities and the limited capacity of hospitals to absorb the unemployed workforce. Despite structural barriers, many continue to imagine new futures and draw on the region's vibrant industrial past as a new politics of hate emerges amid shrinking welfare provisions.