How has your city/region/state changed in the past 5-20 years? (cul-de-sac)

[CHICAGOLAND92]

With the U.S. now having over 300 million people.. it's obvious that some places experienced a lot of growth. How was your area changed to deal with the population growth?

Is your area overcrowded, sprawled out, etc.

In NWI, Gary, Hammond, EC, and the other northern suburbs continue to decline. However, many fields that were once used for farming in Crown Point, Merrillville, and so on are being sold to make room for more restaurants, subdivisions, and businesses, as well as the more rural, southern portions of the region.

[SteelCityRising]

I live in an area that is on the "fringe" of the BosWash Corridor and has a real possibility of reinventing itself as a "satellite city" in the future, considering we're only two hours from Manhattan or Philadelphia. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre has been declining in population quite rapidly for the past several decades, with a current population estimate in the realm of 550,000 or so. However, the metropolitan area experienced slight growth from 2005-2006 that is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. The counties of Monroe and Pike, just to our southeast in the Pocono Mountains, have welcomed more than 100,000 new residents combined since 1990, as people tire of paying outrageous amounts to afford a decent quality-of-life in NYC and Northern New Jersey and decide to instead commute 90-minutes each way to work in exchange for a better quality-of-life in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

The growth has not been kind to some parts of the Poconos. A lot of areas are welcoming too many new residents, and some school districts have been unable to build new schools rapidly enough to accomodate the influx of transplants. Traffic congestion has become an issue on Monroe County's two-lane roads, and strip malls, big-box stores, and McMansion communities are beginning to transform Monroe County from the "Honeymoon Capital of the World" into NYC's newest bedroom community.

Here in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, we've sprawled ourselves out by over 20 square miles since 1970, even as we shedded tens of thousands of residents. This means that our area is actually among the worst in the nation for urban sprawl concerns, as ALL of our lost open space was avoidable due to the declining population. What has this accomplished? We now have struggling core cities while our suburbs are laced with cul-de-sacs, lifestyle centers, and commerce parks. Traffic congestion is an absolute nightmare at rush-hour on what some are now calling the "81 Freeway" (I-81), as that artery in the Scranton area now handles in excess of 80,000 vehicles per day when it was only designed to handle 40,000---aggressive bumper-to-bumper traffic during the afternoon rush-hour is quite typical. All we've done in my area is pick up a dwindling population and spread it further and further away from basic needs and services, which dwindles the tax base in our cities and places increasing demands upon our eco-system. It's not a pretty sight, and I'm wondering if our expected population increase from NY/NJ transplants in the coming years won't only add to our sprawl problems.

[CTownNative]

My old neighborhood in Euclid Ohio,right by Cleveland,went from being 90% white in the early '90s to half black half white now.I like that it is more diverse,it gives the area more character.They put up a Home Depot,but Tops closed.Maxims a food store closed too.Crime has gone up a lot in the past 10 years,and so has poverty.But its still an alright neighborhood to raise a family in.