Anderson, Indiana, once thriving on natural gas and General Motors, now struggles with economic decline and abandoned spaces.
Anderson, Indiana, is one of the few places that has had two major forms of employment move out of the area; in 1912, their sources of natural gas were depleted causing the factories that employed most of the town to close their doors and move onto other areas of the United States to continue their business. Once General Motors moved in, things started looking up for the city. However, like many other automobile industry boomtowns in the Rust Belt, once the industry was outsourced to other countries and the plants closed, the population fled for greener pastures. The once vibrant city was left to decay. Schools that once vibrated with the laughter of kids were left without students; clubs once filled with laughter and joy were forgotten in the face of overwhelming poverty; hotels that housed those traveling through were shuttered and turned into cheap housing before eventually being closed by the city; and shopping malls that once had thousands of customers were largely forgotten as the anchor stores closed for lack of profits. A place that once housed over 70,000 citizens has lost over 20% of the population since the deindustrialization of the 1970s and 1980s.