Dayton, Cleveland, Youngstown and Canton, all homes for many UD students, are considered by Forbes.com magazine to be four of the top 10 fastest-dying cities in the United States.

Richard Stock, director of UD?s business research group, disagrees.

?I would not say these cities are dying,? Stock said. ?The difficulties these cities face which put them on the list is associated with a substantial decline in durable goods manufacturing and the difficulties the automobile industry has faced over the last eight years.?

The loss of jobs from employers such as Delphi, Dayton?s primary automobile parts manufacturer, is a major reason Dayton made Forbes? top 10 list. When looked at more closely, Stock said it?s not as detrimental to the city as it seems.

?Dayton has lost 28,000 manufacturing jobs over the last seven years,? Stock said. ?But how many total jobs have we lost? Maybe 25,000. That means in part we?re already replacing some of those lost manufacturing jobs with employment in other sectors.?

Even though unemployment has increased at manufacturing plants, that doesn?t mean there aren?t any jobs available. Dayton still employs 52,000 people in the manufacturing industry.

?Those are not bad jobs, they are still well-paying and there are a lot of people retiring out of those particular positions,? Stock said. ?So for someone graduating from high school, jobs in manufacturing still exist.?

Dayton is critiqued continuously for its unemployment rate, but as Stock indicated, the numbers tell a different story. Beyond the math and calculations disputing Dayton?s reputation as a quickly dying city is the rich culture it has continuously upheld.

One of the most notable aspects of Dayton?s culture is art, Stock said. It offers a beautiful art center, the Benjamin and Marian Schuster Center for Performing Arts, but the best art scene in Dayton comes straight from its residents.

?Arts in Dayton are about the whole group of people in the arts community that are doing art, both performance art and drama,? Stock said. ?We have a whole set of film-makers in the Dayton area that win national honors on a routine basis. Our community theatre is well known around the country. When I indicate arts in Dayton are thriving, it?s about the community.?

But what about Ohio?s other three cities ? Cleveland, Canton and Youngstown? Can they defy their rankings on the Forbes list like Dayton can?

Stock believes Cleveland will survive in the long term, but Canton and Youngstown may have trouble ahead.

?I suspect Canton and Youngstown long term will have the greatest difficulties,? Stock said. ?Cleveland probably long term will survive, but it will look very different than today. It will be more dispersed than the past with much less manufacturing.?

Pete Larson, resident of Cleveland and UD junior, has noticed changes in the city of Cleveland as well.

?I remember when LTV Steel closed in 2001, and hundreds of people lost their jobs,? Larson said. ?But I have also seen the city expanding and growing. The past closing of LTV Steel has led to the present-day thriving Mittal Steel Corporation. New companies such as Hyland Software have continued to thrive, hiring hundreds of new employees each year.?

While Cleveland and Dayton have the resources to improve, Youngstown and Canton face one challenge that is mainly out of their control: their size.

?The smaller the metropolitan area, the less diverse their employment base and the more difficult it is for them to discover a new source of growth,? Stock said.

Liz Coloutes, a UD sophomore from Youngstown, has noticed these changes firsthand.

?There is not a lot of opportunity for people trying to find a decent job,? Coloutes said. ?I will not go back to Youngstown after I graduate. It would be almost impossible to find a job in my major, Psychology, and it would be hard to find a well-paying job if you were a business major as well.?

Although Coloutes doesn?t see Youngstown as a place to live, Larson, like Stock, has faith in Cleveland. Moving back there after graduation and raising a family there is one of his options.

Since Forbes listed Ohio?s Dayton, Cleveland, Youngstown and Canton as four of the top 10 fastest dying cities in the country, they?ve raised the question; has Ohio gone wrong?

?I think in some ways the irony is that Ohio actually winds up having several advantages over other places dealing with employment growth,? Stock said. ?There are tremendous differences in the quality of life in Ohio compared to a New Jersey or Seattle. These differences are very closely tied to commuting time and how much time one can spend with their family. Long term these advantages will stand Ohio in good stead.?