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More than half of US's 25,000 cities are predicted to become ghost towns by 2100
- throwitaway222 3y agoIf it's a ghost town because of water drying up or unfixable pollution issues (water table, air, etc...) then yes. In all other cases, small towns go through phases of ups and downs. The thing that permanently kills them is the water or pollution issue. Besides those two issues, you'll always be able to find a person willing to live out in the boonies to get away from the crazies.
- Someone 3y agoFull title of the article is “More than half of US's 25,000 cities are predicted to become ghost towns by 2100… so, will YOUR area be affected?” So the HN title is correct, but it is click-bait. FTA: “One of their models showed that half of the 24,295 cities are expected to see a population drop of about 12 to 23 per cent by the end of the century in the most likely scenario. A more extreme estimate predicted the number of cities in decline could reach 64 per cent.” I think there’s quite a difference between a population drop of about 12 to 23% over 70+ years and becoming a ghost town. The common meaning of ghost town (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_town) implies that a town is mostly abandoned. That may happen to quite a few of these, but if it does, the fairly large remaining population will move elsewhere, saving other towns from becoming ghost towns. Also, a town can accept that its population will decline and chose to slowly demolish buildings in order to keep the remaining buildings attractive for settlement. It takes about half a percent every year to keep up with such a population decrease, so that seems doable.