Half of America’s Cities Are Depopulating. We Could Be Headed for a Ghost Town Era.
Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
- By studying population trends and forecasting models, researchers have come to believe that nearly 15,000 U.S. cities will face noticeable depopulation by 2100.
- Populated areas of the cities in question could experience a decline of up to 44 percent.
- Projections call for the biggest drops in city populations to occur in the Northeast and Midwest.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a70793664/half-of-us-cities-are-depopulating-ghost-town-era/Open linkView original on lemmy.dbzer0.com141
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For people who don't know this most cities are built upon the concept that they are constantly growing and receiving more taxes than the year before. It's basically a Ponsi scheme. This works perfectly fine if there is always money coming in. When people and businesses leave the money stops coming in, then everything starts to fall apart quickly. Have you ever wondered why formerly prosperous places like Detroit and Gary went to absolute hell. It's because they started to lose people and business. When the city cost more to operate than what is coming in from taxes, you become the murder capital of America.
What I don't understand is that the most desirable areas (home price, population growth) in the US are also very prone to natural disasters: floods in Carolinas, fires in S California, hurricanes in Florida, extreme heat in Texas and the southwest. Meanwhile, Great Lakes / rust belt area does not get many disasters, still has seasons, has access to fresh water, and yet, cities/areas populations are slowly decreasing or staying flat.
As someone who loved living in the Midwest, the severity of the winters are usually enough to scare people off. And it got kinda muggy in the summer.
I'd love to end up there, as I didn't mind the weather, but I also worked from home and didn't have to go outside more than when I wanted to.
This is probably a good thing, it's more efficient if people live within larger municipal areas closer to amenities. It's very inefficient if we have small towns everywhere that need their own supplies. I'm not saying we should all live in one massive city, just that at scale, things become more accessible to people.
Lot of pro car idiots in this thread.
I live in a city that 10 years ago was losing population and nowadays it's growing in population.
I honestly preferred ot better when it was losing pops.
Eternal growth is unsustainable
The US is also suffering from a low fertility rate, at 1.79 (population replacement rate is 2.1), which we made up for in the 20th century by lots of immigration.
(This is one of the factors that informs the great replacement myth, as non-whites approach outnumbering whites in the US. A vocal minority sees this as a bad thing, especially since whites tend to vote Republican and Blacks tend to vote Democrat).
I find it odd and fascinating that the ownership class is terrified by the notion of a lowering population -- babies allegedly grow up to be workers after all -- but are not willing to pass policy to support child rearing, and depend entirely on tradwife propaganda and restricting contraception access and abortion access.
It's especially a problem since our economy is based entirely on growth, with lots of young people providing support for elders.
The US is not unique with this problem. South Korea, Japan and Italy (actually the whole EU) also have low rates and are trying to implement changes to improve fertility, and so far to little effect.
They want more babies, but don't want to pay anything for it, hence the laws restricting contraception and no support that would potentially increase taxes.
But, the question is, why do they want us to have more babies? And, yes, I mean even specifically white babies. They're hell-bent on replacing workers with machines. More angry people banging at the mansion door seems like a bad idea.
I don't think billionaires are particularly smart.
This is not problem. Population needs to decrease
To add to this there's an event horizon birth rate of 1.5 children per women. Once you cross the event horizon you never come back out (there might be one or two exceptions technically but I'm quoting someone else here so don't @ me)
The basic loop is once birth rates are that low things are usually pretty bad for parents. Uncertainty about the future, extreme focus on attaining stability where stability is an impossibility. Once you drop below 1.5 for a sustained period of time you never come back out. The people who could fix it (parents) are overworked, underpaid, living in tiny apartments they can barely afford, have to pay more in childcare than rent just to maintain their living situation...
The young can't be the only ones investing in the future...
seems like we're already there
Yeah if you subtract immigration and first gen immigrants (>14yo at immigration is highly likely to have the same amount of kids as where they're from. <14yo is highly likely to have close to the new host nations family size) the US is already on the other side of the event horizon.
Total lack of social/ecoomic context as I'd expect from PM.
But sociology and economics are soft sciences, so obviously it's pointless to use and never reflects reality. Unlike physics and engineering, where if it works on paper it will always work for real /s
Just ask mechanics! They love engineers!
Yeah, I really wonder about the mentality of people that would read that article and not wonder "what's actually going on." Like shit just kinda happens and we measure it when it does?
yeah, since as we all know, the world is actually hollow. there is nothing going on inside.
Sounds like the USA needs more immigration.
That's a bandaid fix. Everyone is depopulating except like 5 African countries which are going to enter their own negative birth rates in 15 years if they continue developing.
Im Canadian, and India crossed into negative birth rates a few years ago. The median age in India is almost 30 now
Source
What this means is
A) average age is going to go up roughly 1 year every 2 years
B) the average age in India will be roughly 38 or so in 20 years
C) their 65+ cohort increases by a huge margin
Eventually even they are too old and you're importing a demographic they desperately want to retain domestically. Same with the Phillipines and other emigrant nations.
At what point are we just colonizing other nations through immigration? When their best and brightest all leave the country to earn more in a foreign country, start a family there, and the only thing they give back is a remittance. Any kids they would have had are citizens of their new home nation and they're probably not going back (statistically the supermajority) while their home country dips into negative birth rates and having never developed industrially to support a massive cohort of elderly people.
Hilariously I could see a point where an immigrant takes any net benefit they provide in a foreign nation and use it to support their own elderly parents and grand parents in their home country. The entire planet one giant retirement home...
The USA has plenty of immigration, they just choose to not live where all these towns are depopulating. No one can figure out why.
/S
Because it's full of maga idiots?
Two men were standing under a tree when it began to rain. One said to the other, "good thing this tree will keep us dry."
"But what happens when the treek is soaked, and it can no longer keep us dry?" Asked the second.
"Don't worry," said the first, "we're in a forest. We'll just run to another tree."
50,000 people used to live here... Now, it's a ghost town
If it’s a shift from a labour-intensive agrarian economy, that’s to be expected. A similar thing happened in Iceland, and due to the small scale of the country, it is very noticeable. Some 2/3 of the population live in the greater capital area, and beyond that, the countryside is dotted with abandoned farmsteads slowly falling apart.
This has nothing to do with the agrarian transition. These depopulating cities were created by the agrarian transition. They were where people went after they left the rural areas.
Yup, this is likely because large cities have become too expensive, and rural areas have been getting fiber rollouts. With WFH being a viable option for many people, they can live in the boonies where you can get a 1200sqft house for under $200k.
It's more about regional populations movements. There is no vast movement of people from the cities to the countryside. Rural areas continue to drop in population just as they have for the last century. The rural areas have a higher cost of living when you include job prospects. People can only afford to bid up the housing costs in cities because the jobs pay better than in the sticks.
I long to join them by moving to Canada.
Quick q, where is the research? I had a hard time finding the actual study they were talking about.
The only external data they link to is:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-023-00011-7
"We extended the line of best fit really far!"
This is just as valuable as someone from the 1950s saying this.
Thank you!
It was unsustainable without a lot of forethought and planning.
kinda strange giving wfh should theoretically disperse the populace more. I mean not me I like public transit.
And they'll still have more representation due to our antiquated electoral college
I live in a city and it sucks and I cannot wait to get back to the burbs. I don't live in downtown, so it is not walkable, despite it being a dense area. So I pay more, own less, and do less than if I was back in the burbs. I have no idea why anyone over the age of 25 wants to live in a city. I cannot fathom being an elderly person living in a city. How do you put up with that? I absolutely cannot stand it. I'm glad I tried it, because now I know for sure how much I despise it. I'm not even 30 yet.
Older people who have mobility issues sometimes prefer cities because markets, banks, care providers, other services can be close to home, it easily within ~5 minutes walking/golf cart distance.
The problem with cities is exactly the reason I'd want to move there: cars. I don't want to be tied to cars, car payments, car traffic, car repairs. The only way to get out of that is to move to the city, where I can walk, ride, or take public transit.
Problem: I'm always constantly less than 5 feet away from a fucking road and fucking cars in a city, I hear them when I'm awake and when I'm asleep--there is no escaping cars in a city.
Reality: I'd rather be in a car than next to one if those are my only two options.
We need to get cars the fuck out of cities and give people real choices.
Your usage of city and their usage of city differs.
They are talking about cities like Cameron with a declining population not even hitting 1,000.
That’s a very unconventional use of the word “city”.
Yeah, I don't know what defines a city. I'm guessing each state has it's own definition based on population.
I'd personally call less than 1,000 a village.
Varies by jurisdiction.
In the US a lot of places are defined by the structure of the government rather than anything to do with their size.
I went to school in a "city" of less than 1k people.
The only address that was actually in the "city" was the post office.
Obviously below "subway" population levels, which is the only place I'd want to live. Because life with a subway is awesome; and life without rail transit is abysmal.
I live on the edge of urban/suburban in a small city and absolutely love it. 10 minutes to bike into downtown, tons and tons of businesses and job opportunities, and just a much better community atmosphere. Anytime I go into more suburban/exurban areas, it's downright depressing at this point knowing that it takes 5 minutes in a car to get to literally anything that's not another identical house.
If self driving cars actually take off in mass, I personally think we may see more and more of these occurring. Not how they are now, but in the way busses currently work, no driver required.
If it doesn't require any sort of work to drive, people would just set up their car with their entertainment and 1 hr+ drives become a LOT less tedious. And then these cities that don't really have a lot going for them other than being sorta close to a bigger city will slowly depopulate. If you can get to a better city with more services why not? Anyways that my theory.
I also think as the older crowd make room for the youngins, we will begin to see much less population (or at least a huge slowdown in human beings made). The baby boom bulge is getting into retirement and theres going to be a LOT of houses popping up. More inventory means prices go down. Climate change may change that equation as things get drier/hotter in most of the US so im less sure about that. But less people being made means less housing needs to strain generally.
they must all be coming to Seattle. The city council here worships the gods of Density, and bends over backwards to give density developers anything they want. Den-sit-tee! Den-sit-tee! No escaping that for me!
silence landlord
me? I'm no landlord I just get to live with moar density. Most of my favorite restaurants are gone because their rents doubled, and donuts at one of the new places are $5. Yay, density!
If they do the density right, then rents should come down not go up. More places built to live and have shops means (assuming there is demand fill them, which there certainly seems to be) we should have cheaper rents for each space AND more total revenue for all the landlords AND more variety in nearby shops for all the people living there.
The problem in Seattle is exactly that they are fucking NOT increasing the density of housing and especially of street-level commercial, not nearly fast enough to keep up with all the people moving there.
Lots of talk, more action needed.
eh, the price curve looks a bit more U-shaped. it goes down first as you go from 1 to 3 stories (because less area usage) but then it can go up again (higher construction cost per floor because higher material strains). i'm not entirely sure where the optimum is.
also btw this was not your question but just to add ... i think that it's important to reserve enough space to streets. not to build lanes, but to build cafes and seating banks and trees there. it's a typical problem of cities that they figure out that there's not enough space to build trees, bike lanes, etc. after the houses are built. better reserve space first.
"If thing is done right, everything works fine!"
The problem is, no one can agree what "right" is, so it never works.
If you do less dense "right" it should work, too.
There’s certainly wrong ways to do anything, but I don’t think there’s a right way to make “less dense” handle “more people want to live here.” Those are just opposites.
Wouldn't more population within walking distance cause business rents to go up because of the promise of more business? That seems to be what's happening, and I can't see how it could be changed by "doing it right" unless they imposed rent controls. Talking about West Seattle in particular, more apartments have been built in the last 10 years than since I moved here 38 years ago.
I would expect more nearby residents makes the business rents go up, (more demand) and more nearby commercial space makes the business rents go down, (more supply) so ideally there would be some kind of reasonable balance between these things.
What we’re actually seeing is skyrocketing demand and skyrocketing rents for just every kind of real estate so clearly this is not happening.
Please don’t mistake me for somebody with deep knowledge of the subject; I’m just a loudmouth on the internet.
What I’m arguing against is the idea that densification makes business unaffordable and we’d all have more interesting restaurants nearby if we just made everyone keep buying their own single family home with a yard. Even I can tell that that’s an asinine position.
Well, whatever happened to make business rents skyrocket here, it happened at exactly the same time as the big density push. Could have been some other factor since this apparently defies the physics of density, but it happened.
People move to Seattle -> rents go up -> density push to fit all these people
The less Americans there are the better.
Frewer
are you calling us fat
I don't think you understand what the article is talking about.
This isn't a population reduction, it's a population relocation.
Canadian says dumb shit, more at 11
I mean, with 54% 'barely literate', there's a pot-kettle issue coming.
Brother literacy rates in Canada aren't doing so hot either.