[BrinChi]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...inking/597544/

To see what’s more deeply afflicting these metros, it’s useful to understand the plight of Chicago, whose growth after the Great Recession was just a blip in an otherwise long period of decline. Some of Chicago’s problems are unique among large metros. It sits on the far hip of the Rust Belt, hundreds of miles from the coastal economic juggernauts, and it has a homicide rate twice that of New York or L.A.

But in many ways, Chicago’s problems make it a canary in the metropolitan coal mine. Immigration to the area has declined by half since the early 2000s. High earners have swarmed the Chicago River banks, revitalizing the downtown area, but the more diverse middle class, especially the city’s African American population, is evacuating Chicago’s suburbs. During the Great Migration of the 20th century, when millions of black Americans moved to northern cities, the population of Chicago went from 4 percent black in 1920 to nearly 40 percent black by 1990. But this century has seen a “Reverse Great Migration,” as the metro black population is on pace to halve from its peak of 1.2 million by 2030. This could reflect a flight from high-crime neighborhoods and the racist legacy of redlining throughout Chicagoland. Less pessimistically, it might be a sign that a lot of young black families would just rather live where they can afford more house, like in the suburbs of Atlanta and Houston.

Each of these Chicago phenomena—declining immigration, revitalized downtowns coinciding with a middle-class exodus, and the specific decline of the black population—has spread from the heartland to America’s largest coastal metros.