This Is Akron: Tell us your vision of the future – Akron Beacon Journal

By Doug Livingston

Bucking the trend to move away, Michael Jewell got married and found his forever home in 1975 in the midst of a seismic shift in Akron.

Already 40,000 factory jobs had gone, signaling the full bust of an industrial boom that had built Akron and other legacy cities now competing to reinvent themselves. Akron — a city with neighborhoods named after the paternal companies that employed them — would shed 50,000 residents in the next 40 years as Jewell moved from South Akron to Firestone Park — “very congenial, I would say, upper middle-class neighborhood.”