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I think fresh water issues and the growing heat due to global warming will curtail sun-belt growth. Not to mention rising sea levels
Agree...this growth is draining resources all around, and it will be interesting when they can physically no longer beg borrow or steal water to sustain themselves.
The sunbelts boom is going to eventually limited by suburbanization and the poor planning that comes with it. It's very odd that cities like Charlotte and Atlanta have very bad traffic that's comparable to the NE given their size. In this will end up making commute times become unbearable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbcmh81
All you're saying with the migration stuff is that Sun Belt does not produce enough jobs to keep up with the migration levels, meaning no matter how you look at it, unemployment is higher. All that in-migration has negative consequences over time as well, and not just with unemployment rates. A good one is to gradually remove the economic advantage of cost of living. More people demanding more stuff means everything becomes more expensive. And what does in-migration have to do with job creation? Texas, for example, is clearly doing well, but it is a unique example and produces more jobs than much of the Sun Belt combined. Lumping the entire region together is a little bit disingenuous when one state is doing most of the work, but we hear all the time how awesome the Sun Belt is doing economically. That case cannot be made so easily as it was 5-10 years ago.
Here are the states I've always seen referenced as the Sun Belt: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. These states in 2012 represented 160,654,710, for a % of US population of about 51.17%.
The states I've always seen references as the North include: Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin. These states represent 130,501,366, for a % of US population of about 41.57%.
The states that aren't traditionally included in either area are: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, representing 22,747,964 or about 7.25% of the US population. Even if you included all of these with the North, the population would still be below that of the Sun Belt.
So when you give a rather short list of metros with below national average unemployment, it's not that impressive. Here is the unemployment rate breakdown of all metros in the North and Sun Belt.
BTW, the national unemployment rate is 7.6%, not 7.1%.
3% and Below
North: 1
Sun Belt: 0
3.5% and Below
North: 8
Sun Belt: 1
4% and Below
North: 10
Sun Belt: 2
4.5% and Below
North: 17
Sun Belt: 4
5% and Below
North: 23
Sun Belt: 10
5.5% and Below
North: 27
Sun Belt: 22
6% and Below
North: 38
Sun Belt: 34
6.5% and Below
North: 58
Sun Belt: 62
7% and Below
North: 75
Sun Belt: 89
7.5% and Below
North: 98
Sun Belt: 105
This represents all the metros below the national rate in May. The North clearly dominates with the metros with the lowest unemployment rates. The Sun Belt gradually catches up and then has more metros in the 6% to 7.5% range, but considering the much larger population of the region, the balance seems pretty even. And certainly, this doesn't indicate that the Sun Belt is the dominating force for economics that people love to claim... at least not currently.
If we went by state-level unemployment, the picture is similar.
States with unemployment rates of...
3.5% and Below
North: 1
Sun Belt: 0
4% and Below
North: 3
Sun Belt: 0
4.5% and Below
North: 4
Sun Belt: 0
5% and Below
North: 5
Sun Belt: 2
5.5% and Below
North: 7
Sun Belt: 3
6% and Below
North: 8
Sun Belt: 3
6.5% and Below
North: 8
Sun Belt: 5
7% and Below
North: 14
Sun Belt: 8
7.5% and Below
North: 16
Sun Belt: 10
Virginia definitely fits in the mid-atlantic or north category because it's growth is in the DMV metro region not in the other parts of the state.
The sunbelts boom is going to eventually limited by suburbanization and the poor planning that comes with it. It's very odd that cities like Charlotte and Atlanta have very bad traffic that's comparable to the NE given their size. In this will end up making commute times become unbearable.
It's also important to note that many Sunbelt cities like Atlanta and Charlotte are doing a good bit of urbanizing within the core of the metropolitan area. There are tons of residential developments happening along and or close to rail lines in those cities. Also, one good thing about the recession is that it put a halt to much of the exurban development that was occurring on the fringes and this is reflected in more recent population trends which show the central cities/counties receiving much of the region's growth.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Natural510
Agree...this growth is draining resources all around, and it will be interesting when they can physically no longer beg borrow or steal water to sustain themselves.
The western half of the Sun Belt yes, but the Old Confederate/ Border states have great water resources. Kentucky alone has the largest man made lakes by both volume and surface area east of the Mississippi plus the most miles of navigatible rivers.
The sunbelt boom is not going to end probably until the next 20 years.
I think the sunbelt is headed for a pretty bad crash actually. 10-20 years from now a lot of cities that were doing well will start to hurt. All of these southern cities have economies that are contingent upon the high growth rates they currently enjoy. If those growth rates slow down, aren't they in trouble? Part of the reason people look forward to moving there is because people are moving there. It seems like a very typical boom/bust mechanism to me.
I think the sunbelt is headed for a pretty bad crash actually. 10-20 years from now a lot of cities that were doing well will start to hurt. All of these southern cities have economies that are contingent upon the high growth rates they currently enjoy. If those growth rates slow down, aren't they in trouble? Part of the reason people look forward to moving there is because people are moving there. It seems like a very typical boom/bust mechanism to me.
But this has already happened with the recession and although all Sunbelt cities haven't fully recovered, most are getting there. I think over time, it will still grow faster than other parts of the country just not as fast as they were before and will eventually level out. I definitely don't see a crash coming. I wouldn't even use that term to describe what's happened over a large chunk of the Rustbelt.
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