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Given the link the OP provided, this posting does not make sense. The *cities* in the Great Plains are growing if not booming, but, from what other information that I have read, the rural towns and hamlets in the region are shrinking, so that is the larger picture that people should consider. This phenomena is often referred to as "brain drain": what that means is that, say, educated young adults in NE, for example, tend to flock to Omaha, Lincoln, and Minneapolis, while the teeny towns they came from slowly die. This trend is merely a replication of the general urbanization pattern one might observe over the past 100+ years in the U.S. as a whole.
I should know; I grew up near Minneapolis, which had booming suburbs in the 80s and 90s, and I then then lived in Madison, WI, which experienced similar growth (I know these are not technically the Great Plains, but right next door). But in both cases, you didn't have to drive very far to be amidst a big batch of cows, forests, and farms. Then I moved to Austin, TX, and during the decade I lived there, the I-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio and North up to Dallas grew exponentially, while small TX towns depopulated. When I moved to the NY Metro in NJ, the landscape was obviously much more densely populated, but the same trends held: people moved from western NJ and PA and rural NY to urban centers with more jobs and opportunities.
Now I live in southern Mississippi, and the same thing is happening: young people leave the small hamlets of their nativity for Atlanta, Memphis, Jackson, Birmingham, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, or wherever. So the conversation needs to be less about the depopulation of an entire region, and more about what happens when really small towns die as well as what happens to the people left there who lack either the desire or means to leave. Even in a state like MS, living in the extremely sparsely populated Delta spells an entirely different quality of life and access to amenities than living near the Gulf Coast. The map is not the territory.
This map shows the area of the most concentrated population losses in the Great Plains have stretched from North Dakota to Kansas plus much of the Texas Panhandle.
Last edited by StillwaterTownie; 07-21-2014 at 01:27 AM..
Yeah tell the bad economy to the people of North Dakota..
High School Drop Outs Making $75,000 a year starting..
Get a .50 Upper, reach out, reach out a touch something..
Not gonna last. Once the infrastructure is in place, only the core staff will remain behind. The construction workers will be laid off, and that is a huge loss of jobs. Pretty sure when the Alaska pipeline was being built, it was the same boom and bust story. Is Prudhoe Bay some sort of Mecca today? No, it isn't, and the same will be of Williston
They have plans for mega growers and livestock producers for these areas. Low paid workers will fill up small abandoned towns like in years past. Everything will be owned by the huge agricultural companies.
The article is highly misleading. When people note that "the Great Plains" are losing population, that's a reference to the rural areas, not to cities like Dallas or OKC. Plains cities have been growing for a while, and that's nothing new.
The non-urban areas (for the most part) continue to depopulate, which has been the case in much of the plains since the 1920's or 30's. Rural areas across the plains - from western Minnesota to western Oklahoma - used to be a lot "busier" back then, with bustling small towns full of shops and services.
There is a certain sadness in losing a lot of that culture, but those towns aren't really as viable now that fewer people are needed to work the land due to automation and consolidation.
The real change of importance is the following:
1. Transportation. Many of these small towns grew up because it made sense to put resources needed there - due to distance from the consumer of those resources. Modern transportation has made it cheaper to travel 2-3 times the distance than to pay the overhead of low volume retailers.
2. Increased overhead costs. At the start of the last century, the profits you made were yours. Property taxes were minimal to non existent, no constant outlays of cash for cash, insurance, energy, etc. Basically, what you worked for and produced was almost all yours to use for what you needed. Today, MOST of what you work for is consumed by taxes, mandates, and increased costs of needs imposed by regulation. So, it's no longer viable to have low cash flow, resourceful people who fulfill their own needs.
3. Change #2 above has made it ever harder to run small scale production (or venture), while change #1 has made competition from large scale production (or ventures) infeasible to overcome.
Small towns dotted the eastern landscapes every few miles because that's how far it was viable to go to reach the railroad, store, doctor, etc. Today, those distances are up to 5 times their original metric, while still consuming relatively small amounts of your time.
Further, #2 above has caused more recent generations to head to the city where cash is much easier to obtain - basing their life on cash flow rather than productivity. However, it will eventually balance out, as the cities continue to raise their residents' overhead to the point where it becomes personally more viable to move away and back toward the countryside to obtain a lifestyle less frenetic and money-centric.
I was looking at that population map and super imposed it over the current drought map. Its interesting that the areas with the largest increase in populations are also the areas now suffering from drought, at least in the west.
I wonder if low the water reservoir levels there are from increased water consumption and not just from drought.
Given the link the OP provided, this posting does not make sense. The *cities* in the Great Plains are growing if not booming, but, from what other information that I have read, the rural towns and hamlets in the region are shrinking, so that is the larger picture that people should consider. This phenomena is often referred to as "brain drain": what that means is that, say, educated young adults in NE, for example, tend to flock to Omaha, Lincoln, and Minneapolis, while the teeny towns they came from slowly die. This trend is merely a replication of the general urbanization pattern one might observe over the past 100+ years in the U.S. as a whole.
I should know; I grew up near Minneapolis, which had booming suburbs in the 80s and 90s, and I then then lived in Madison, WI, which experienced similar growth (I know these are not technically the Great Plains, but right next door). But in both cases, you didn't have to drive very far to be amidst a big batch of cows, forests, and farms. Then I moved to Austin, TX, and during the decade I lived there, the I-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio and North up to Dallas grew exponentially, while small TX towns depopulated. When I moved to the NY Metro in NJ, the landscape was obviously much more densely populated, but the same trends held: people moved from western NJ and PA and rural NY to urban centers with more jobs and opportunities.
Now I live in southern Mississippi, and the same thing is happening: young people leave the small hamlets of their nativity for Atlanta, Memphis, Jackson, Birmingham, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, or wherever. So the conversation needs to be less about the depopulation of an entire region, and more about what happens when really small towns die as well as what happens to the people left there who lack either the desire or means to leave. Even in a state like MS, living in the extremely sparsely populated Delta spells an entirely different quality of life and access to amenities than living near the Gulf Coast. The map is not the territory.
So the cities are growing but the rural areas are depopulating? (I don't know, I'm just asking).
What are the long terms effects of that? Good or bad?
Detroit had a few good years, and now several terrible decades. Are you saying there should never have been industry there?
It, too, naturally depopulated. The difference is Motown did have tremendous population for a long time.
The GP beyond economics is simply a horrific climate region, reducing migration that might otherwise occur.
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