Cities that Died. :( (Portland, residential, difference, cost)
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Exactly! These cities transformed America from a largely rural, agrarian nation into what it is today. Unfortunately, American capitalism eats its own. We have no problem tossing away entire cities.
Forgive me if this has already been stated (I did not pour over 12 pages of comments), but i did want to point out that the list provided which purported to show the list of U.S. cities losing population was quite misleading. Take DC, for instance. Sure, the city's population is down about 30% for it's peak in the early 1950s, but that largely reflects people moving out of the city proper and into nearby suburbs. DC is in no way "dying" (it actually gained population over the last decade), the metropolitan region is growing quite substantially.
There are many ghost towns (or sites of ghost towns that have succombed to the elements) in my home state of Oregon.
But there was also a modern city called Vanport that was constructed in 1943 as the largest public housing project in the nation. It had a peak population of 40,000 people. It only lived for 5 years and was completely destroyed after a d*ike broke and it flooded in 1948 and no trace of it remains today.
Forgive me if this has already been stated (I did not pour over 12 pages of comments), but i did want to point out that the list provided which purported to show the list of U.S. cities losing population was quite misleading. Take DC, for instance. Sure, the city's population is down about 30% for it's peak in the early 1950s, but that largely reflects people moving out of the city proper and into nearby suburbs. DC is in no way "dying" (it actually gained population over the last decade), the metropolitan region is growing quite substantially.
unfortunately true since the govt is growing so damned much
I poured over all 14 pages and found this to be a very interesting thread. I'm sorry to see so many of the great cities like Buffalo & Detroit going into decline. They have some really beautiful early-20th century skyscrapers that now appear to be empty. Like that railroad building in Buffalo. I hope that these cities all experience rebirths. Growing up on the West Coast it's hard to imagine a city like Pittsburgh losing so much population.
And if you want to see a dying Western city go to Butte, Montana. As an earlier poster said it has gone from a 1900 population of 100,000 just just a few thousand now. Lots of old old brick buildings can still be seen in 'uptown'. The old Berkeley copper pit devoured a lot of Butte's old commercial heart.
Never been there, but I understand that's what happened to Johnstown, PA. Went from something like 70k in 1960 to ~26k today.
I lived in Johnstown for a yr and a half. I wonder where its at now with this recession and all. They were dropping people like flies in town, but this was before the recession. I wonder if when other places got worse, some people actually moved back there. Before the crisis, it was one of the WORST places to be. It still seems more lively than Gary and that IL town though.
The biggest problem northern cities are having is sustaining there current population. If you can't sustain and maintain a good quality of life for your current residents than how do expect to grow.
Cities like Dallas and Charlotte will continue to grow because its a much warmer climate, jobs, and overall quality of life is better.
While there is certainly some population loss in the metro areas up north, the city population figures can be skewed because many cities in the North are not able to annex any territory. While Charlotte and Dallas add new suburbs to their city "population" each year, northeast cities' boundaries stay fixed. So, rapid suburban growth shows up in the Sunbelt stats but not in the Northeast cities. Quality of life is a relative thing, too.
I don't have any population data on-hand, but a decent chunk of Port Arthur, TX looks dead. Some of it is due to hurricane damage that nobody has bothered to repair, but the city in general is just full of blight, abandoned and burned out houses and buildings. Even the Walgreens in the downtown area closed...you know a city is in trouble when the Walgreens can't survive.
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Goldfield
