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The point of the article is to normalize that "americans" is synonymous with "urban new yorkers" and the rest of the population doesn't count. Clearly, rural m
by VLM 6y ago
The point of the article is to normalize that "americans" is synonymous with "urban new yorkers" and the rest of the population doesn't count.
Clearly, rural mining ghost towns are familiar with the concept of slowly shutting down a boomtown. See also the rust belt cities which were de-industrialized about three generations ago, and continue a slow decline, or at least slower growth than the rest of the country, since then. Some like Detroit are going to something like ghost town status, others like Janesville are doing OK ish, it all seems to depend on demographics. Compare Flint MI and Janesville WI pre and post their respective GM plant shutdowns.
- ndiscussion 6y agoThe difference to me is that rural ghost towns kind of just disappear. Urban ghost towns require billions of dollars every single year: https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2018-11/Budget%20in%20Brief%20-%20Final%20-%2010%2024%2018.pdf https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2018-1...
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y agoQuick question where do you think the huge population growth in large cities over the last few decades came from? Cities are full of people who lived through part of those declines and left, or grew up in those places after and left. Part of what "decline" means in this context is "your young and ambitious people all left for the nearest very large city or NYC."
- VLM 6y agoThat population growth doesn't seem to exist. Certainly not in NYC graphs. San Francisco was exponential growth until 1940, then flatlined since 1950. Detroit and Baltimore were those destination cities until 1970 or so. Huge population growth in large cities is a pre-WWII effect and its an outside the US effect. Last time NYC had Shenzhen-like population growth was over a century ago.
- CharlesW 6y ago> The point of the article is to normalize that "americans" is synonymous with "urban new yorkers" and the rest of the population doesn't count. I RTFA and it absolutely does not do this or even imply it. "Urban collapse" is right there in the title, so it'd be odd if the article talked about rural collapse. You and/or your family were clearly hurt by rural collapse, and I'm sorry for your pain. Having grown up in rural Iowa, I know that seeing rural communities and towns wither away sucks in its own way.