Rust Belt Christmas

City sidewalks, Rust Belt sidewalks, dressed in holiday style. These were made using Midjourney in December of 2023.

Festive Steel Mills

Your city might well have a steel mill. Or, it might well have a steel mill that has been shut down, in which case you can convert it into a Christmas Village.

Festive Dodge Durangos and Urban Blight

At $42,000 and with a dubious track record for reliability, the Dodge Durango is one of the flagship vehicles of the urban Midwest, typifying both irresponsible consumer spending and the downfall of Chrysler. Financed at $700 a month and guzzling gas at 15mpg in city driving, it is the working man’s vehicle. It is the car to drive recklessly and irresponsibly, without using turn signals. 

Rust Belt Service Sector Economy at Christmas

In Michigan especially, we love the development of strip malls and warehouses, while policymakers still cling to the idea that the year is 1981, Ronald Reagan hasn’t yet decimated the labor movement, and manufacturing will live forever. In reality, we are losing manufacturing to the south, where labor and environmental regulations are weaker, and where the Ponzi scheme of urban growth is currently facilitating a boom in urban development. We even have a shot of a call center after hours, where management has been so kind as to allow service sector workers to bring in their own Christmas trees (to be set up on their own time– not on the clock).