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>A new study has run the numbers and found that by the end of the century, almost half of the nearly 30,000 cities in the US will face some sort of population d

>A new study has run the numbers and found that by the end of the century, almost half of the nearly 30,000 cities in the US will face some sort of population decline, losing between 12 to 23 percent of their resident population. I am genuinely curious to know what number of cities and towns in the US have lost at least 12 to 23 percent of their resident population, or have become ghost towns, in the past 100 years.

cafard 3y ago
A lot of mining towns have closed up when the ore (or coal) ran out. Some of them may have gained back population because they are in country that is attractive to the well-off.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  I think it's fair to say that some of the rust belt cities decline is due to the iron ore running out in the great lakes region. And some of it was the rentier capitalists attempts to break unions.
nostrademons 3y ago
12-23% is pretty easy, and includes some very prominent present-day cities. Detroit lost about 2/3 of its population between 1950 and today. Pittsburgh lost about 60%. St. Louis lost 65%. Buffalo lost 53%, Cincinnati and Baltimore around 40%. Ghost towns are rarer, and it doesn't usually happen to major cities that have national recognition. There's a good list [1] on Wikipedia. tl;dr: they number in the hundreds, easily, but are largely small towns that you wouldn't have heard of unless you lived locally. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ghost_towns_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Un...
rayiner 3y ago
Lots of them. “Ghost towns” is an exaggeration. But Detroit has shrunk from 1.8 million to 650,000 and that’s caused tremendous economic problems. Philadelphia has shrunk from over 2 million to about 1.5 million and is stuck in a constant state of stagnation. Chicago has shrunk from 3.6 million to 2.6 million. It’s in much better shape than the other two, but went from being the “Second City” to a one with a questionable future. Baltimore shrank from nearly a million people to under 600,000, and seems to be in a state of terminal decline. Pittsburgh almost hit 700,000, and now is less than half that. The city has enjoyed a recent resurgence due to CMU and biotech, but the prosperity is not widely shared, and the city is kind of a museum to its more prosperous heyday.
- ArekDymalski 3y ago
  These numbers are impressive. Do you have data on the split od these reductions? What percentage moved to the suburbs of the same city, nie mamy moved away and do long?
  - pchristensen 3y ago
    I don't think any of the large metro areas have shrunk in population, certainly none significantly. But those metros (St Louis, Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, etc) have stagnated or grown much more slowly than healthier metros. They have suburbanized a mostly constant population, leading to much higher infrastructure construction and maintenance costs, while devaluing the real estate tax base that supported existing infrastructure in the central cities.
rufus_foreman 3y ago
The default tendency for cities over the last 100 years would have been to shrink due to the decrease in household size. In 1920, it was 4.3 people per household, today it is 2.5. Some cities have increased population by expanding their city limits and annexing adjacent unincorporated areas or merging with other cities. And some cities had existing undeveloped areas. But for many cities, they were already completely built up and haven't increased their city limits. In that case, the main way a city can grow population is to replace single family detached houses with multi-family housing, or to replace smaller multi-family housing with multi-family housing with more units. In metro areas that are constrained by geographical or regulatory constraints on the growth of suburbs, this was done. But in metro areas that don't have those constraints (most cities in the midwest) suburban land is cheap and that type of housing replacement doesn't make sense. When land is cheap, single family detached housing in the suburbs is cheaper to build per unit than multi-family housing, so that is primarily what gets built. In that case, even if there is no flight from the inner city or housing that is abandoned, the central city becomes less dense as household size declines.

cafard 3y ago

A lot of mining towns have closed up when the ore (or coal) ran out. Some of them may have gained back population because they are in country that is attractive to the well-off.

Gibbon1 3y ago
I think it's fair to say that some of the rust belt cities decline is due to the iron ore running out in the great lakes region. And some of it was the rentier capitalists attempts to break unions.

nostrademons 3y ago

12-23% is pretty easy, and includes some very prominent present-day cities. Detroit lost about 2/3 of its population between 1950 and today. Pittsburgh lost about 60%. St. Louis lost 65%. Buffalo lost 53%, Cincinnati and Baltimore around 40%. Ghost towns are rarer, and it doesn't usually happen to major cities that have national recognition. There's a good list [1] on Wikipedia. tl;dr: they number in the hundreds, easily, but are largely small towns that you wouldn't have heard of unless you lived locally. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ghost_towns_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Un...

rayiner 3y ago

Lots of them. “Ghost towns” is an exaggeration. But Detroit has shrunk from 1.8 million to 650,000 and that’s caused tremendous economic problems. Philadelphia has shrunk from over 2 million to about 1.5 million and is stuck in a constant state of stagnation. Chicago has shrunk from 3.6 million to 2.6 million. It’s in much better shape than the other two, but went from being the “Second City” to a one with a questionable future. Baltimore shrank from nearly a million people to under 600,000, and seems to be in a state of terminal decline. Pittsburgh almost hit 700,000, and now is less than half that. The city has enjoyed a recent resurgence due to CMU and biotech, but the prosperity is not widely shared, and the city is kind of a museum to its more prosperous heyday.

ArekDymalski 3y ago
These numbers are impressive. Do you have data on the split od these reductions? What percentage moved to the suburbs of the same city, nie mamy moved away and do long?
- pchristensen 3y ago
  I don't think any of the large metro areas have shrunk in population, certainly none significantly. But those metros (St Louis, Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, etc) have stagnated or grown much more slowly than healthier metros. They have suburbanized a mostly constant population, leading to much higher infrastructure construction and maintenance costs, while devaluing the real estate tax base that supported existing infrastructure in the central cities.

rufus_foreman 3y ago

The default tendency for cities over the last 100 years would have been to shrink due to the decrease in household size. In 1920, it was 4.3 people per household, today it is 2.5. Some cities have increased population by expanding their city limits and annexing adjacent unincorporated areas or merging with other cities. And some cities had existing undeveloped areas. But for many cities, they were already completely built up and haven't increased their city limits. In that case, the main way a city can grow population is to replace single family detached houses with multi-family housing, or to replace smaller multi-family housing with multi-family housing with more units. In metro areas that are constrained by geographical or regulatory constraints on the growth of suburbs, this was done. But in metro areas that don't have those constraints (most cities in the midwest) suburban land is cheap and that type of housing replacement doesn't make sense. When land is cheap, single family detached housing in the suburbs is cheaper to build per unit than multi-family housing, so that is primarily what gets built. In that case, even if there is no flight from the inner city or housing that is abandoned, the central city becomes less dense as household size declines.