Cities that belong in other states

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Its CSA grew over 5%. It was not that bad.

I was talking about city proper Detroit.

If the city proper had gotten more immigrants, it could've helped offset continued white flight.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I was talking about city proper Detroit.

If the city proper had gotten more immigrants, it could've helped offset continued white flight.

I see. But in the 1990's most of cities were still in a very bad place. The US grew more than 13% but suburbs were still the star.

[benp]

Originally Posted by Yuri

I thought about Philadelphia as well. Around that time it looks so depressed, like on the Rocky movies or on the Philadelphia opening scenes. Now we see Philadelphia shining, looking wealth, with tons of developments on those YouTube videos praising urban living. Remaining urban alone helps Philadelphia today.

And if Detroit did worse than Philadelphia, but not becoming a city with 1/3 of the population, it would still look very different and arguably more urban. 1.2 million would put it where Dallas is today, but Dallas, of course, is more the 2x the size of Detroit.

As Detroit metro area is still wealth, about on the US average, its alternate strong core could put it on all those discussions of cities with great urban living and that alone would help it retain or even attract new dwellers.




Yes, I meant St. Louis and even Buffalo seems worse than Cleveland in this respect. However Detroit looks much worse than those two.




Its CSA grew over 5%. It was not that bad. Faster than Cleveland and St. Louis for instance.

For Pittsburgh and Buffalo than it was tragic: they shrank on that golden decade. And ironically, on the 2010's, the "worst" decade ever for US demographics, both grew for the first time since the 1960's.

Interestingly, both Pittsburgh and Buffalo metro areas were showing population growth in the early 1990s, but by 1994 both resumed their population decline, driven by outbound migration and falling birth rates. 1995 was the last year that Pittsburgh had a positive birth rate (more births than deaths), though Buffalo stayed positive until the COVID years.

I suspect that the slow national economy of the late 80s and early 90s was an ironic benefit to many northern and midwest cities, as fewer jobs were available in the sun belt for people to seek, so they stuck around. Once the national economy got rolling again, the rate of people packing up and leaving increased.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Its CSA grew over 5%. It was not that bad. Faster than Cleveland and St. Louis for instance.

Yeah, Metro Detroit achieved a new all time population high in the 1990s. The metro hadn't set a new high since the 1960s, and is still currently below the highs set in the 2000 and 1970 censuses. The city of Detroit's population losses in the 1990s were also the smallest losses since the population slide began in the 1990s.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by benp

Interestingly, both Pittsburgh and Buffalo metro areas were showing population growth in the early 1990s, but by 1994 both resumed their population decline, driven by outbound migration and falling birth rates. 1995 was the last year that Pittsburgh had a positive birth rate (more births than deaths), though Buffalo stayed positive until the COVID years.

I suspect that the slow national economy of the late 80s and early 90s was an ironic benefit to many northern and midwest cities, as fewer jobs were available in the sun belt for people to seek, so they stuck around. Once the national economy got rolling again, the rate of people packing up and leaving increased.

Do you have very recent data on natural growth at counties/metro areas/states level? As the US is in a sharp decline since 2007, I guess there are plenty of metro areas firmly on negative terrain.

That makes Pittsburgh growth in 2010's even more remarkable. Their natural growth is in a much worse position than it was in the 1960's. They might even have had a domestic migration surplus.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, Metro Detroit achieved a new all time population high in the 1990s. The metro hadn't set a new high since the 1960s, and is still currently below the highs set in the 2000 and 1970 censuses. The city of Detroit's population losses in the 1990s were also the smallest losses since the population slide began in the 1990s.

I checked it again and Detroit CSA grew faster than Philadelphia metro area.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Yuri

I thought about Philadelphia as well. Around that time it looks so depressed, like on the Rocky movies or on the Philadelphia opening scenes. Now we see Philadelphia shining, looking wealth, with tons of developments on those YouTube videos praising urban living. Remaining urban alone helps Philadelphia today.

I mean, those are movies.

Philly is doing fairly well these days, and gentrification is strong, but Philly had a bigger population when Rocky was released. And the neighborhood where Rocky "lived" was very likely better back then.

This is Rocky's street, and neighborhood. It's terrible. It's also a few blocks from arguably the biggest drug addict crossroads in the U.S.:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9899...8192?entry=ttu

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I mean, those are movies.

Philly is doing fairly well these days, and gentrification is strong, but Philly had a bigger population when Rocky was released. And the neighborhood where Rocky "lived" was very likely better back then.

This is Rocky's street, and neighborhood. It's terrible. It's also a few blocks from arguably the biggest drug addict crossroads in the U.S.:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9899...8192?entry=ttu

Sure they're movies, but serve as a historical register on perception the public, the culture had on cities, including New York. And fortunately, it's very different in 1990 than it is in 2020. Heck, for the first time ever, many/most major cities grew faster than their suburbs.

My point was if Detroit decline have had been a bit slower, it would look more urban today and could be profitting from this massive socioeconomic and cultural shifts that made US cities to be desirable once again.

[benp]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Do you have very recent data on natural growth at counties/metro areas/states level? As the US is in a sharp decline since 2007, I guess there are plenty of metro areas firmly on negative terrain.

That makes Pittsburgh growth in 2010's even more remarkable. Their natural growth is in a much worse position than it was in the 1960's. They might even have had a domestic migration surplus.

I checked it again and Detroit CSA grew faster than Philadelphia metro area.

Natural growth or decline in pre-COVID 2019 and in 2022 (latest data) in a few selected Metro areas

NYC: +80,604 / +58,745
LA: +56,832 / +25,658
Houston: +51,220 / +39,983
Dallas: +49,393 / +40,679
Washington DC: +39,263 / +29,999
Chicago: +32,738 / +12,423
Atlanta: +30,494 / +20,415
Phoenix: +20,491 / +7,990
Minneapolis: +19,079 / +12,602
Seattle: +19,031 / +13,466
Miami: +15,974 / +723
Austin: +14,294 / +13,907
Boston: +10,807 / +8,921
Philadelphia: +10,038 / +3,085
Salt Lake City: +9,944 / +7,545
Detroit: +7,105 / -4,020
Baltimore: +6,443 / +3,463
St. Louis +4,200 / -2,714
Birmingham: +1,696 / -798
Cleveland: +41 / -5,471
Buffalo: -206 / -1,731
Pittsburgh: -4,502 / -9,225

Metro areas that showed natural decline in 2019 included Akron, Asheville, Atlantic City, Bangor, Buffalo, Charleston WV, Davenport, Dubuque, Flint, Knoxville, Naples, Palm Bay/Melbourne FL, Pittsburgh, Portland ME, Port St Lucie FL, Roanoke VA, Scranton, Tampa, and Youngstown. Many many others showed negative in 2021 and 2022 due to COVID.

Source: https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/population/

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

My point was if Detroit decline have had been a bit slower, it would look more urban today and could be profitting from this massive socioeconomic and cultural shifts that made US cities to be desirable once again.

I've long argued around here that Detroit's population decline is actually the result of the regional growth policy in Metro Detroit. As long as the state and counties continue to promote exurban development, the city of Detroit will struggle to stop hemorrhaging population. If the sprawl actually did stop the then the city of Detroit would naturally stop declining without much intervention.

Detroit's suburban areas have increased in population every decade since 1950, but in the 5 decades since 1970 the suburban growth was only possible because of the city's decline in population. Without the city feeding the suburban population growth, the suburbs would have declined with the city in those three decades.

Detroit growth / Suburban growth (net regional growth)
1970s: -310,695 / 155,000 (-155,695)
1980s: -175,394 / 43,837 (-131,557)
1990s: -76,704 / 207,492 (130,788)
2000s: -237,493 / 57,950 (-179,543)
2010s: -74,666 / 159,915 (85,249)

It would probably take at least a 500k regional population increase in a decade to outpace the sprawl in Detroit and stabilize the city's population. And that's probably a very generous estimate.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by benp

I suspect that the slow national economy of the late 80s and early 90s was an ironic benefit to many northern and midwest cities, as fewer jobs were available in the sun belt for people to seek, so they stuck around. Once the national economy got rolling again, the rate of people packing up and leaving increased.

According to Wikipedia, July 1990 marked the end of what was at the time the longest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history. And anecdotally, I lived in both California and Massachusetts in the late 1980s and both were booming.

[PhillyRising]

Originally Posted by jbermingham123

What really added to the bitterness on STL's end was the fact that it was St. Louis's own damn fault.

ALL the railroads wanted St. Louis, not Chicago, to be their central hub.

St. Louis is far more centrally located. The number of cities one could get to in a single day's train ride from St. Louis was greater than any other city in the US at that time, despite it being somewhat on the western periphery, because of its location at the intersection of the river and the flatlands. Even if you go around the appalachians to the east, the piedmont region from Virginia down to Alabama is still rugged enough that the fastest route from New Orleans to New York was via STL. Its straight and flat the whole way up and over until you get to basically Columbus, Ohio.

Chicago, which was also on the western periphery, was additionally on the northern periphery. The "big cities" we always think of as being close to Chicago, like Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Des Moines, Indianapolis, and even Detroit, were tiny at the time.

Anyway, in a spectacular example of good old American shortsightedness, the initial attempts by the big railroads to create a hub were sabotaged by St. Louis's leadership, because of lobbying by the riverboat companies.

They convinced everyone that the railroads would replace the employment of tens of thousands of workers, with just a few engineers who needed only to pass through (unlike boats, trains dont need to be loaded and unloaded except at their destination), destroy the city's living connection to its river heritage, all with NO benefit to the city itself, as the profits would just to go east coast railroad barons like Vanderbilt.

A large station and railyard was eventually built, but the critical few years of initial setback was enough to give Chicago the edge, and the rest is history. Indirectly, that initial setback is also largely responsible for the growth of Omaha, which would today look more like, say, Sioux Falls, if not for the northern rail route becoming the main line.

...and if you think about it...St Louis Lambert could have been the huge connecting airport hub for the Midwest instead of O'Hare. I've flown to both. In 1991, I once had a non revenue ticket on TWA and had to fly through St Louis to get to Fort Lauderdale....from Philadelphia. It was a long day but a fun trip.

[PhillyRising]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Sure, and that just points to geographic location and history. With that peer influence comes more of a shared culture, more than Phildelphia has with most of its own state, like you mention. And that's why I was saying that it "belongs" in another state in the context of this particular thread. It's a complete hypothetical and not a slight on Philly at all, nor trying to suggest that Philly is somehow not "true" Pennsylvania. Again, it is obviously the very reason for the state's existence, just like NYC is the very reason for New York state's existence.



And my comments have never been a Philly-Pittsburgh rivalry thing, nor do I have any interest in expoloring that crap (mainly because to me and to most people that I've come into contact with in Pittsburgh and Philly... it doesn't even actually exist... except maybe kind of with hockey, but no one really gives a shit about hockey anyway).

But you find regional, tribal-ish, mainly perceived city rivalries all over the place. And it's really just a rather baseless distaste for the "other".

Cleveland and Cincinnati "hate" each other for no real reason other than that they are different because they are located in very different regions of the same state. This goes for Philadelphia and Pittsburgh as well. Dallas and Houston "hate" each other because Houston is more blue collar and Dallas is more uppity (Dallas and Ft. Worth also have a rivalry for the same reason). Though not in the same state, Chicago and St. Louis have a rivalry... not sure why, but seems like that. Everywhere else in Florida hates Miami and vice versa. New Orleans considers Shreveport and anywhere in northern Louisiana "yankees". Bay Area and Southern California "hate" each other. Philadelphia and New York have a city rivalry (though it's pretty much one-sided it seems)... etc. etc. etc.

But all in all, it's perfectly natural that Philadelphians don't really perceive Pittsburgh as a peer city or a rival, and it really goes both ways. If you're talking to some dumb yinzer who pretty much only watches sports and has barely ever left SW PA, then yeah, he probably will show contempt for Philly, but a yinzer like that has contempt for pretty much everything... and he definitely has a counterpart in Philly somewhere (probably Delco) Most well-adjusted people don't care or have the time or energy for this make-believe world.

I get you! My reply wasn't any criticism of you. I went to college in the 80's so the anti Philly sentiment then might have been worse than...I don't know. All I know was on day one at IUP, the yinzers were all over my accent.

But yeah...there just isn't that loathing of Pittsburgh down this way. I suspect a lot of people around here have never set foot in Pittsburgh. You could wear Stiller gear around here all day an nobody is going to bat an eye.

It's kind of like how the Eagles/Cowturds rivarly once went...we hate all things Dallas but for years they didn't view Philly/Eagles as anything.

Now they do. Maybe one day Philly and Pittsburgh will have some sort of rivalry but since I like both cities and think Pittsburgh is a nice place to live (it's just too far west for me)..I really don't want there to be one.

[benp]

Originally Posted by craigs

According to Wikipedia, July 1990 marked the end of what was at the time the longest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history. And anecdotally, I lived in both California and Massachusetts in the late 1980s and both were booming.

I had a different perspective living in Texas at the time, when low oil prices crashed the economies of large parts of the country. Houston, New Orleans, Denver, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and many other smaller places experienced population declines during the late 80s. These cities had been primary destinations for a lot of Rust Belt job hunters (like me) when their economies were hot, as that was where most of the available jobs in the US were at the time. Places in the deep south and Florida did not as yet have the jobs or the economy to attract migrants from up north.

[Yuri]

A random comment: some people might bo be aware but the US is an incredibly unique country regarding on how people move around so easily. Just look posts above where forumers were telling about living in different parts of the country or we're discussing population declining of some metro areas while others are growing 30%, 40%/decade.

Down here in Brazil we had one of world's largest peacetime migrations ever registered: several millions of Northeasterners left the region heading to Southeast, but that's poor people from a poor region trying a better life in a much wealthier one in a time the country was going through an incredibly fast urbanization wave.

Middle-class families, however, don't move around as they do in the US. They're much more established with strong roots on their cities or states here, hence we don't see such dramatic population growth patterns in Brazil or anywhere in the world for that matter.

Originally Posted by benp

Natural growth or decline in pre-COVID 2019 and in 2022 (latest data) in a few selected Metro areas

Source: https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/population/

Thank you, benp! I remember to have seen that link years ago but I thought they were not updating it.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I've long argued around here that Detroit's population decline is actually the result of the regional growth policy in Metro Detroit. As long as the state and counties continue to promote exurban development, the city of Detroit will struggle to stop hemorrhaging population.

But LOTS of other US metros have been promoting sprawl as well, but without hollowing out the central city to the same extreme degree as has happened in Detroit.

I mean, both Detroit and Chicago have lost a bunch of people to sprawl over the decades, but what are the policy specifics of what Michigan/metro Detroit did or did not do relative to Illinois/Chicagoland?

To me, the expansive sprawl seems pretty similar between the two metros, but the outcomes of the two central cities are quite a bit different. There seems to be an additional ingredient here beyond a simplistic "it was all sprawl's fault".

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

But LOTS of other US metros have been promoting sprawl as well, but without hollowing out the central city to the same extreme degree as has happened in Detroit.

I mean, both Detroit and Chicago have lost a bunch of people to sprawl over the decades, but what are the policy specifics of what Michigan/metro Detroit did or did not do relative to Illinois/Chicagoland?

To me, the expansive sprawl seems pretty similar between the two metros, but the outcomes of the two central cities are quite a bit different. There seems to be an additional ingredient here beyond a simplistic "it was all sprawl's fault".

It doesn't seem likely that the ratio of suburban sprawl to urban development is the same in Chicagoland as metro Detroit. There would have to be a LOT of empty subdivisions in suburban Chicago for that to be the case.

[Crawford]

Chicago received a huge number of Mexicans concurrent with suburbanization/white flight. Mexicans really filled the bungalow belt, and prevented widespread decay.

And Chicago has always been a big magnet for young, highly educated types, keeping the core strong. Big 10 grad mecca and all that.

[iheartthed]

FWIW, the decline of population in Chicago has never outpaced the population growth in Chicago's suburbs. Chicago's suburbs have obviously fed off of Chicago for growth, but in no single decade has the decline of the city's population accounted for all of the suburban growth the way it has several times in metro Detroit:

Chicago growth / Suburban growth (net regional growth)
1970s: -361,885 / 522,768 (160,883)
1980s: -221,346/ 345,446 (124,100)
1990s: 112,290 / 782,552 (894,842)
2000s: -200,418 / 546,360 (345,942)
2010s: 50,790 / 103,8825 (154,672)

That's not to say that Chicago's suburbs haven't been growing faster than the city, because they have been outpacing the city since the 1950s*. But Chicagoland has never had a situation where 100% of suburban growth was directly because of the depopulating city. Suburban growth around Chicago has always been supplemented by natural growth or in-migration, in addition to absorbing some flight population from the city.

*The 2010s have the smallest gap between city and suburban growth in Chicagoland since at least the 1950s, so maybe Chicago is trending away from this pattern.

[Steely Dan]

^ that's all interesting data, but what I was looking for was your opinion on the policy differences between Michigan/metro Detroit and Illinois/Chicagoland when it comes to sprawl and the different outcomes of city propers of Detroit and Chicago.

As far as I can tell, there are no major policy differences on the issue between the two, therefore it stands to reason that the cause(s) for the different outcomes of the two central cities is more complex than just "sprawl".

[Yuri]

^^
Or as @iheartthed said previously, highways might have been more intrusive and damaged in Detroit. And of course, racism seems to be worse there too.