Indeed, a somewhat underappreciated story from the mid to late 20th century in America is that cities were dying. I grew up near the tail end of that era so I w

Indeed, a somewhat underappreciated story from the mid to late 20th century in America is that cities were dying. I grew up near the tail end of that era so I well remember it. If you look at the population peaks for a lot of big cities in America in the 20th century (New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Detroit, etc.) you'll see a peak in the early to mid 20th century followed by a long decline. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, not the least of which is rampant racism, but a major consequence of it was that shrinking big city populations led to economic decline, rising crime, diminished tax base, diminished spending on core city infrastructure, and overall a feeling of helplessness and crisis in those cities. It was only with changing demographics and a transformed economy where urban centers became desirable places to live again and economically vital again (starting around the '80s and really taking off through the '90s and early 2000s) that big cities rebounded and started growing again. But the infrastructure debt from all those years of decay still looms, and cities will be paying that off for decades to come.