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But I'd wager that given the choice, most people would choose the $150,000 house in Georgia versus a $150,000 house in Upstate NY for none other than weather alone.
I don't think anyone is moving to North Georgia for the winter weather.
The Atlanta area gets plenty of snow and below-zero temps. Only a fool would move to Atlanta to escape the winter.
You have to move south of Orlando to really escape the winter. At the least, you want to be near the coast. Atlanta is in the Appalachian foothills, and gets the same storms that hit the Northeast and Midwest.
Despite gentrification in urban cities, the migration downwards is soaring and isn't expected to end any time soon. Construction and real estate is going to continue although there were setbacks in those sectors due to the recession. Not only are blacks and hispanics leaving the NE as the years go by, whites are leaving in huge numbers as well.
As much as we don't like it, the housing boom is coming back.
The sunbelt boom is not going to end probably until the next 20 years.
I respectively disagree....I think the growth will continue albeit at a slower pace and level off in a few decades......everything is fluid. At one time noone would have thought the Northeast states would reach such a relatively low population growth rate.
Few issues... we are no longer going through a drought... but when we are... you need to remember what a drought is.
GA/FL are still humid semi-tropical/tropical environments... we go through a drought just because we get less rain than normal...and river levels falls... not because we get no rain.
When we went through our drought we still got plenty of rain...just not near as much as we, our reservoir, or river systems are use to.
It's OK. It's not really a big secret that many areas in the south have issues maintaining their fresh water supplies. I believe the term "water wars" has been used on occasion to describe the situation between GA, FL, and AL. The comment about rain was more for the southwest. For the southeast, it's a multitude of issues and the addition of more people and more sprawl will eventually push the area to the breaking point. I believe that GA had a taste of what it might be like a couple of summers ago.
It's OK. It's not really a big secret that many areas in the south have issues maintaining their fresh water supplies. I believe the term "water wars" has been used on occasion to describe the situation between GA, FL, and AL. The comment about rain was more for the southwest. For the southeast, it's a multitude of issues and the addition of more people and more sprawl will eventually push the area to the breaking point. I believe that GA had a taste of what it might be like a couple of summers ago.
I actually know in great detail about the tri-state water issues and it is no secret down here. That article doesn't even begin to touch on the details either.
The ability to access water is not a problem in that we are a humid sub-tropical environment. We get much more rain than areas with a much higher population. The problem is mostly politically created and is solvable, but it is a matter of how.
The state of Georgia only takes out about 2% of the water in the Chattahoochee River Basin. Upwards to 5% in a drought year. That includes drinking water supplies and farm irrigation in SW Georgia. Alabama likely takes another .5-1% out on a typical year. A vast majority of the water goes out to sea and there is plenty of it.
Lake Lanier also already has the water holding capacity for the Atlanta region to supply metro Atlanta and it's growth easily for the next 30-40 years. The caveat to that is they have to lower lake discharges for generating hydroelectric power that gets sold off to Georgians. In the past when we lowered that generation to we... through Georgia Power and higher electrical bills... allow for greater power generation capacity to be created in other places to replace that electricity.
Largely what we are facing is an anti-urban backlash from an uninformed public that just painted Atlanta as taking most of the water and causing the problems from what was considered to be a 100+ year drought event.
The irony to all of this... a year later the area I live in got a foot and half of rain (not snow...rain) in just 3 days. Flooding was all over. We have plenty of water... the issues are the politics for how it is stored, used, and treated.
A good resource to go about the issue is the Atlanta Regional Commission. Tri-State Water Wars | http://www.atlantaregional.com
Unlike our neighbors we actually do have a water use plan at the local and state levels.
The other issue is some states really aren't negotiating with us at all on the matter as their populace really isn't a heavy user of the water at all. They just want as most of it going out to sea as feasibly possible to maintain a slightly better fishing industry in drought years. There isn't much pressure for them to honestly consider the issues and/or negotiate.
Anyways the point I'm largely getting at for the point of this forum... It is political growing pains... the ability for us to grow physically exists.
As for the larger questions asked by this thread....
The sunbelt will continue to grow as long as we can maintain a lower cost of living and lower taxes...
Once we hit that critical point where we grow so large that we much increase taxes to maintain the same level of services to handle the population... that is when things will taper off and things really will equal out.
The other issue I am unsure of... is Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston will hit those points earlier, but there are still plenty of other areas in the sunbelt (I mean we are talking about a massive areas compared to the Northeast) that will still have the capacity to grow fairly cheaply. I think areas like Charlotte are a good example of the second wave large growth cities.
If that happens... I would suspect places like Atlanta and Dallas will continue to grow at a much slower rate, but act as regional hubs/business centers with slightly higher cost of livings and jobs/people that ultimately require the cheapest cost of living will end up in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th wave of sunbelt cities that see growth.
I think you're misunderstanding. You are right. Rates are affected by people who cannot find work. However, the states that you harp on in the Plains, Northeast, and Midwest, never really had declining population or high employment rate in the first place. They hardly have diverse industries as the growing sunbelt states and they will usually hover around the top.
I know for a fact that North Dakota did up until the last few years. It's seen a very small amount of growth recently, but most of the last decade saw a decline. And I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. If there are jobs available, unemployment will be low regardless of how many people live in an area. And you're not doing the South any favors by suggesting that those Northern states maintain lower unemployment overall. It would pretty much defeat the entire though process that the South has more job opportunities. Clearly, if that was the case, unemployment would stay lower there as well. Instead, it's some of the highest in the nation.
But then again- Upstate NY gets feet and feet of snow for months on end. Of course some people don't mind that and some even like it. But I'd wager that given the choice, most people would choose the $150,000 house in Georgia versus a $150,000 house in Upstate NY for none other than weather alone.
So in upstate NY, you have 4-5 months of winter, not all of which are getting "feet and feet" of snow, then a relatively nice 6-7 months. In the South you have 4-5 months of extreme heat and humidity with the threat of hurricanes/floods/drought/torndadoes, and in the winter they still see snow on occasion, as they have at least twice this winter and last winter also. I'm not really seeing a big difference as far as positives/negatives go. Weather is the most overrated reason to move to any region. Unless you move to San Diego, chances are there are going to be issues with the weather for parts of the year.
Unemployment rates are often more stable and smaller in smaller states where the following occur:
1) the industry is more agricultural and/or self-employed/family based
2) Acts as a tax shelter due to the populations small size and desire from investment from just a few key industry/companies.
3) Have economies based in local resource extraction and that is the main driver of their population growth, where the extraction continues...even during recessions/downturns.
The Dakotas often have harsh winters, but they attract people to sparsely populated areas for their resources, tax shelters for financial companies, and farming. This especially holds true, when you compare the states with others with far larger populations.
States with larger populations must be much more diverse economically and can't soley depend on tax shelters, resource extraction, or farming. Which means that they are less likely to dodge the recession's effects on average.
Inversely... sometimes it is also possible for extremes to be reversed. This isn't the best example, because it has grown so much, but I'm going to bring up Nevada. The economy there is based off of tourism so much it is very prone to getting hit hard from a large recession. One of the first things to get axed from many family budgets are the more expensive vacations and gambling, while they focus more on saving and maintaining their home/basic necessities. Florida is in a similar boat to this, but also much larger and more diversified too.
Another area that is heavy on resource extraction and is typically begging for employees to put up with harsh environments and higher costs of living is Alaska. I'm not really sure how they have/haven't weathered the recession though. I haven't seen much talk about them.
You guys are making compelling arguments for staying up North.
You guys are making compelling arguments for staying up North.
ummm? Are you even reading the commenting you are replying to?
My comment isn't about north, south, west or anything. It is mostly about why analysts often ignore or overlook smaller geographies when they disproportionately stable during recessions than larger states.
That has little to do with north vs south vs west...etc... There are also some fairly small states in the north as well.
So in upstate NY, you have 4-5 months of winter, not all of which are getting "feet and feet" of snow, then a relatively nice 6-7 months. In the South you have 4-5 months of extreme heat and humidity with the threat of hurricanes/floods/drought/torndadoes, and in the winter they still see snow on occasion, as they have at least twice this winter and last winter also. I'm not really seeing a big difference as far as positives/negatives go. Weather is the most overrated reason to move to any region. Unless you move to San Diego, chances are there are going to be issues with the weather for parts of the year.
Great point. You pick your poison. I grew up in North Carolina and still live here. I have family in south Florida, parts of New York, and the Bay Area of California, and the family I have in those places has been in those places for 40 years or more. You'd be amazed at what people can get used to:
The World Series quake hits the Bay Area, and I spoke to my aunt, who was about 40 miles from the epicenter, and she just shrugged it off, at least in it's effects at her house.
My cousins and uncle stayed in their house in Coconut Grove when Hurricane Andrew blew through. They reported that it was in fact scary, and they'd leave the next time a category 5 storm approaches, but the house stood, and they've gone through weaker hurricanes without batting an eyelash. One of those cousins, by the way, is now in Wisconsin, and acclimating to Wisconsin winters - which are serious business indeed - is, in fact, possible.
Here in NC, I've been through hurricanes, one of which I mostly slept through. I've also witnessed one 3-foot-snowfall (granted, in the Appalachian part of the state), I've seen a 2-foot snow in Raleigh, and close to it in Charlotte. Have not seen a tornado, though I'm very well aware that they've hit various places in the state.
I have some acquaintances who moved down to Chapel Hill from Boston to get their kids into the schools, and they mentioned to me that their biggest fear in NC was all of those tornadoes. I explained (meteorology in college) that - in the Eastern Seaboard states (all the Atlantic Coast states, plus Pennsylvania), that the most violent (in windspeeds) tornado to have ever been recorded in that area was an F5 tornado that struck Wheatland, Pennsylvania in 1985. The same thunderstorm later spawned a tornado 2.5 miles wide in the Moshannon Forest north of State College. The most expensively destructive east coast tornado, meanwhile, hit the northern suburbs of Hartford in October 1979, and did something around $400,000,000 in damage, the only tornado outside of Tornado Alley (Plains/MS Valley) to ever do that level of damage. And then there's the Worcester tornado in 1953, which flattened (not damaged, but flattened to the foundations) several miles of houses in Worcester; the thunderstorm itself was so potent that debris fallout embedded inside hailstones fall over the southern part of Boston's metro 45 minutes later.
So in upstate NY, you have 4-5 months of winter, not all of which are getting "feet and feet" of snow, then a relatively nice 6-7 months. In the South you have 4-5 months of extreme heat and humidity with the threat of hurricanes/floods/drought/torndadoes, and in the winter they still see snow on occasion, as they have at least twice this winter and last winter also. I'm not really seeing a big difference as far as positives/negatives go. Weather is the most overrated reason to move to any region. Unless you move to San Diego, chances are there are going to be issues with the weather for parts of the year
.
Fair enough. I think the bottom line is that everyone has their own tolerance for weather. I grew up in TN and thus we did not have perfect weather by any means. Winters were a mixed bag: usually Nov-March were the cold months but usually above freezing with a few cold snaps. Summers were of course hot and humid. BUT... I did live in MA for a few years and there is a BIG difference between TN cold and MA cold. In MA the winters were so cold and miserable it sometimes actually hurt to go outside. Snow stuck around for sometimes months. The cold snaps lasted longer and the overall cold was far more extreme. I absolutely hated the weather there. I told myself I will never live anywhere like that again.
Then again, a lot of people obviously can deal with it because all of the states above the mason dixon line have people living there. I guess one thing to see is that if you're on forums like these, chances are there's very few people moving from Southern and Western states to Northern and Midwestern ones. The opposite is true.
Anyway... I'm a bit spoiled now. Living in California has softened me up a bit. It was 70 degrees yesterday while the entire Northeast was buried in snow. I do not envy them at all and thank my lucky stars I don't live there anymore. We're planning on moving to TX in a few years and it'll be warm there also. I did my time in the cold weather. No more of the that for me!
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