The Fastest-Growing U.S. Cities Aren’t What You Think
 

The Fastest-Growing U.S. Cities Aren’t What You Think


AUG 21, 2019

By RICHARD FLORIDA

Read More: https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/08...ata-us/596485/




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Baltimore part of the Rust Belt? Give me a fucking break

well chicago is apparently "east coast" now, so i guess anything can be anything ;)

"welcome to miami, the finest city in the pacific northwest!"

Meh, percentages will always favor the smaller cities. NYC , LA or SF would have to be adding insane numbers to show up in the top categories here.

This makes perfect sense. It explains how Atlanta was in the NL West for many years.

And the Falcons in the NFC West for many years.

And the Cowboys in the NFC East.

Mesa ???? Really? This makes em question how this number is calculated.

its a massive suburb of 400+ thousand people so there are lots of people and businesses who don't even identify as "mesa" residents just suburban phoenix residence/offices.

What a surprise! - cities in the West and the South are growing faster than other regions.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/08...ree-us/596509/

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Those Detroit figures are completely backward precisely because they are called a 'Motor City', when the current economy goes so diverse that it gets the establishment itself completely freaked out.

Just listen to their news. They would tell you about "n'importe quoi" (totally silly things), like robots and AI would get your butt unemployed while we've never seen anything like it so far.
At least, not on the short term and as far as AI goes, I doubt it would ever be the case, because most programers and matheticians who master it are gifted with some real ethics and would never kill humans.
I said it already, South Korea and Germany are the most robotized developed societies, and humans are doing rather fine in both countries.
Not all of us are Google with any creepy "human enhancement" plan - that would go to the rich exclusively, guys, not to you - or any nasty monopoly of that kind, thankfully.

Just every single city of the Western world has to go diverse, flexible and skilled in every respect, or it dies.
That's just all I read in our media specialized in the global economy.

Mesa baby! My hometown. Numbers are from the ACS, so likely to be as good of information as we're likely to get.

It is funny though to see Mesa on lists like this, and shows the limits of how useful these types of lists can be. Mesa is now the 35th most populous city in the country, with over 500k people, and by my count the most populous suburb in the country. While there has been a little bit of infill here and there, most of that population growth is the never-ending march eastward into newly incorporated desert land. And I'm not aware of any truly notable employers that are contributing to the jobs numbers. The only top employer of note in Mesa is Boeing, and the rest of the top employers in Mesa are schools, government, Walmart, Home Depot, Kroger, and the local healthcare conglomerate Banner. Mesa is not an economic superstar that is outpacing Phoenix metro, as indicated by the fact that Mesa is on both the fastest jobs growth list, and the slowest adults with graduate degrees growth list.

Hey according to this Chicago isn't shrinking, that's nice...

This is mixing up the stats of metropolitan areas and central cities, along with a few other misunderstandings. First, the stats talk about employment at the metropolitan level, then dives down into education stats of the central city. This doesn't say what you think it does. Like all major cities, Detroit is home to the poorest and least educated of its home region, but, unlike other cities, very few of the richest and most highly educated. So, this is actually a statement about segregation and isolation of poverty, and not some macro economic statement about Metro Detroit.

Second, the auto industry is not as big of a factor in the city of Detroit as people who don't know better would think. In fact, no automaker even makes the top 5 employers in the city of Detroit. To go even further, the largest employer in Detroit, Rock Ventures (Dan Gilbert), employs more people in the city of Detroit than Chrysler and General Motors combined. And GM is the only automaker that is actually HQed in the city of Detroit.

https://www.michigancapitolconfident...loyers2015.jpg

source: https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/22580

To contrast, the top largest employers in Metro Detroit are Ford, GM, Chrysler, the Detroit Public Schools, and Rock Ventures. Ford does not even crack the top 10 of employers in the city of Detroit, even though the company employs almost 100,000 people in Metro Detroit (and is the largest private employer in Metro Detroit). GM also employs nearly 100k in Metro Detroit, but only has just about 6k employees in the city of Detroit itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econom...olitan_Detroit

About a decade ago, the city of Detroit itself was by far the largest employer in Detroit. Austerity measures drastically reduced the size of city government, and many of those workers were residents of the city. That hardly ever gets analyzed.

Don't count lawyers in with people with other kinds of post-graduate degrees and that stat. for DC would be minuscule!

It wasn't all that long ago when there were no cities where half or more of the population had earned a bachelor's degree. Now there are several.

What's happening in Omaha? Doesn't strike me as a city that would be that high on the growth list.

Annexation, which is why city studies are pretty useless.

^ Well, the #'s shown here don't really match with actual census growth rates in Omaha (which tend to show consistent moderate growth). They cite the census as their source, which of course can't be the case since it's 2012-2017 data...(assuming they are using ACS)

I find it very unlikely the growth rate for Omaha during that period is the same as Charlotte.

Omaha seems pretty successful for a small city in a forgotten part of the country. It has some pretty major companies and is surprisingly wealthy.

Well the Rust Belt does effectively extend to the East Coast and Baltimore City fits the bill in several ways.

Statements like this demonstrate how regional most of us can be.

From the perspective of somebody living in Florida, the eastern Seaboard or SoCal Omaha might seem to be a "forgotten" part of the country but for anyone living in the greater Midwest, Colorado and Kansas Omaha and Nebraska are certainly not "forgotten"

eh, I think the Rust belt at best can extend to Great lake cities in Upstate NY and maybe west Virginia, but once we cross the Appalachians I think its eastern Seaboard.

Rust belt comes from the Iron/steel belt which were the great lake industrial cities who began to lose their industry in the 1970's (even though thats largely a misconception some classic heavy industry disappeared but there is still plenty of manufacturing all over the "rust" belt)

and not even all of the classic heavy industry disappeared. some of it just got heavily automated.

for example, Gary's USX steel works still makes more steel than any other place in the north america, but a mill that once employed 30,000 people back in 1970, now only employs about 5,000 due to massive amounts of automation that were introduced into the steel fabrication process.

so in many cases, stuff is still being made in the rust belt, but lots of people don't have jobs anymore.

the popular myth is that all of the jobs got off-shored to china/mexico, but that's only half the story.

a great many of the jobs didn't go anywhere, they're just being done by machines now.

Rust Belt are former industrial/ manufacturing cities. Not necessarily iron/ steel industry. Not sure what industry dominated Baltimore but it's in the Mid-Atlantic which is heavily Rust Belt.

I dont mean literally steel thats what the rust belt was called before it was the rust belt even if they were making aluminum. Baltimore is at its heart an old east coast port city like Philly, NY, Boston etc.

It was never in the steel belt so I wouldn't call it part of the rust belt even if it has a bunch of abandoned factories.

balitmore absolutely used to be in the steel belt.

the former sparrows point steel mill in baltimore used to be one of the largest (if not THE largest) steel mills on the eastern seaboard.

it produced steel on-site for the adjacent ship-building yards (back when they actually built ships there).

it's been shuttered for almost a decade now, but it was definitely one of the biggies back in its heyday.

Again, rust belt cities are cities that once were a strong manufacturing base that declined when jobs moved south or overseas. Steel was merely one facet of heavy industry in that region. The fact that it has abandoned factories is kind of indicative of Baltimore's Rust Belt status. My hometown in Upstate NY is a bombed out Rust Belt mess but was never a steel town; it was known for firearms, defense, radios and textiles.

I see this misconception a lot, and I blame the media. The Rust Belt does not mean Midwest. Many places on the eastern seaboard are also considered Rust Belt according to the technical definition. I think even Brooklyn may have fit the technical definition of Rust Belt until this current decade. The Bronx might still fit it.

Baltimore is very often included in the "Rust Belt", as are areas of eastern PA and eastern upstate NY... Scranton, Harrisburg, Allentown, Bethlehem, Hazelton, Reading, Chester, Norristown, Schenectady, Utica, binghamton, etc... even Philadelphia itself. Yes, people may not realize, but Philly is quite rusty.

They were all negatively affected by the same factors in the same era as a result of the decline in American manufacturing.

It even extends into New England. Springfield, Holyoke, Worcester, Manchester, parts of CT, RI, etc.

I find that definition far to expansive to be useful. Basically any city with pre-war industry? In my opinion rust belt is very specifically Midwest (great lakes specifically) Industrial cities and towns. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Erie. Mostly everything along the Ohio river etc. Hell even Scranton could probably count.

Thats not to say there wasn't industry cities and towns in the Northeast and they arent also rusty due to moving industries and changing economic conditions. I think of the rust belt as much geographically (probably even more so) than I do as a social or Economic classification.

There is pre war industry that became "rusty" all over the country even in Washington, California, and the deep south but I would never consider those places part of the rust belt, and I don't consider anything on the Atlantic coast to be rust belt.

Not sure what your opinion has to do with it, but the term was created to refer to industrial hubs on the eastern seaboard and upper Midwest.

not that wikipedia is the final arbiter of anything, but most people could probably stand to give this link a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt

Yeah I dont like that definition and disagree with it.

Its not like general "belt" designations are scientific classifications. They are loose at best. This is the same thing you see with generations where every demographer, pollster and social scientist has their own "official" ranges for generations, and even wholly unique generations made up out of their own ass.

What does this even mean? You are arguing that Baltimore can't be Rust Belt because of your own criteria. Your own criteria has nothing to do with the actual definition of the term. Maybe you should create a new term.

Your definition is wrong. Utica NY is not Midwest or Great Lakes but it's still a rust bucket.

"actual definition" is a stretch

I guess it is your right to look like an idiot and argue "actual definitions" with the dictionary:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rust%20belt

I can disagree with anything I want.

I think its dumb to include the northeast in the definition of rustbelt. Websters adds words to its dictionary every year that I think are idiotic and shouldn't be there.

lolok dude.

LOL k dud, I'm not arguing about the definition of water We are talking about a colloquial phrase invented in the last 40 years based on another colloquial phrase invented in the last 100 years.

It is loosely defined and I disagree with including the Northeast in that definition. Webster's doesn't control the English language, it isn't the arbiter of any definition let alone the one for "Rust Belt"

Hell it isnt even a complete list of all English words and does not claim to be nor could be because English is an extremely organic language actually. Really interesting stuff if you care to look into it.

I explained exactly why I think Rust Belt should be the midwest in an earlier post and I dont think my opinion was unreasonable.

So yeah, I dont like that definition, and LOL I am allowed to say so.

I get what you’re saying. “Rust Belt” is a term open to many different interpretations, which vary based on one’s primary defining characteristic of the term. Is it geographic? Economic? Social?

It’s all of them in a certain combination. So that leaves it open to individual interpretation. Is Chicago rust belt? Some would say no way, while others would say hell yes. Just like Philly.

It’s probably become more associated (maybe even interchangeable) with the “midwest” in the national consciousness. Because we hear about it more often applied to cities in the Great Lakes and Midwest regions in recent times, but that’s a rather narrow way of looking at it overall. It’s really opinion though, and will vary based on where someone is from, where they grew up, etc.

As someone who grew up in the fucking buckle of the rust belt, equidistant from Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh, I know it when I see it. And Baltimore 100% qualifies, just like Detroit 100% qualifies. They’re very different and they’re very much the same. But that’s just my opinion. I don’t think there’s a true right or wrong answer in all cases to this. I mean, “rust belt” is a term based on broad pigeonholing as it is. It’s not entirely quantifiable.

The term is pretty well defined. Everyone else is using it according to the definition. You are not. End of story.

I'm from upstate New York (northeast), that region has been dubbed apart of the rust belt all my life. I'm 46.

I do wonder... what is your definition of “Northeast” then?

Pretty much everything between the Appalachians and the coast but north of dc

New England is part of that but also has the sub designation of New England

Not like any of these definitions are hard and clearly defined it’s just a general term of reference

Right. Upstate NY is without a doubt rust belt. I mean it really defines the term.

Yes and I said I think the upstate New York cities on (or near) Lake Erie and Ontario would be rust belt but I wouldn’t think of nyc as rust belt

I’m not going to entertain your arbitrary confinement of the discussion.

End of this discussion.