Is there a tipping point when cities reach irreverisble decline? (Dallas, Boston)
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David Rusk's book "Cities without Suburbs" is a good start for his Point of Ne Return definition (and a list of cities that meet his criterea).
David Rusk's point of no return uses the following criterea:
1. population loss,
2. isolation of racial minorities, and
3. declining incomes of center city compared to it'ssuburbs
Additional criterea others have used would be the number of improvrished neighborhoods and cities with high crime rates or high homicide rates.
I'm thinking there are very few cities...true cities not some mining camp...that disappeared...and I'd think you'd have to look at mining towns of fairly large size for the best long-term comparison. Butte Montana perhaps, or Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
I'm thinking there are very few cities...true cities not some mining camp...that disappeared...and I'd think you'd have to look at mining towns of fairly large size for the best long-term comparison. Butte Montana perhaps, or Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
There's a lot of small to medium sized industrial cities in the Northeast who fit the description. Camden NJ comes to mind.
Camden, yes....Camden, East St Louis, and Gary are usually the three that are used as examples, but they have not totally disappeared, either, to the degree of becoming ghost towns. Gary is at 80K and Camden is at 77.3K, so they would be considered small "3rd tier" industrial cities here in Ohio...like Lima or Springfield.
I think these places will reach a sort of stablized rate of decline...which is sort of what happened to Butte.
If you graph population loss there is usually a sharp drop off the peak, then a shallow glide slope of decline. Decline continues, but the rate is lower...and maybe continue to stay lower pushing the approach to zero to near infinity.
This is just alegebra or mathematical abstraction, what it means is that as decline passes certain population points there becomes the question of viability of public services (in terms of tax support for said services).
This is actually sort of an interesting question...how much can a city drop before it stops becoming a viable government entity?
Obviously population (and income) loss will effect things like retail availablity, too. That's happened here in Dayton, where population loss & crash in incomes due to loss of work or good paying work resulted in a retail collapse (as in the closing of supermarkets, fast food places, etc) in some parts of town. I guess we could apply that to places like Camden and Gary, too.
In larger urban areas, the rates tend to be cyclical. There is no tipping point, per se. A city goes through a massive incline over several decades, then an industry or large job sector gets shipped out, people move away for various reasons, retail shuts down, city services go on life support, land loses value, and then... re-investment and gentrification occurs. But, it takes a long time. These cycles are measured in decades if not centuries. So, what looks like inevitable decline all the way to desolation is usually just a sample measurement from a small period of the cycle and over a smaller sample area. For example, Cleveland proper peaked at around 900,000 in 1950. Today, it is less than 1/2 of that. However, we are now seeing people with $$$ head back into the city. The real decline started with the exit of the large industrial presence of steel manufacturing in the mid 60's and continued for nearly 50 years. However, the metro area has grown substantially since 1950. It is simply more complicated than just the population rate of growth/decline in a given city proper.
I've said it before. There is more here than meets the eye. One mentioned marriage rates. Well, there is something important to consider. In Philadelphia during the 1900s, murder rates for Italians were higher than for Blacks. It was mainly the highest among young, single men.
I've said it before. There is more here than meets the eye. One mentioned marriage rates. Well, there is something important to consider. In Philadelphia during the 1900s, murder rates for Italians were higher than for Blacks. It was mainly the highest among young, single men.
you have a source for that?
[not trying to argue, just curious]
someone on the NYC forum made this comment
Quote:
Originally Posted by NYJets99
And since you bring the irish and italian up, almost 95% of their murders were cleaned up and not put on public display, hence the "we're gonna make him disappear" quotes you always hear in those movies.
Direct quote: "They often came as single young men",
Another direct quote from the literature: "Their rate of homicide, as measured not by trials or indictments, but by imprisonment for murder and voluntary manslaughter, was very high in the early years of the twentieth century-for a time even higher than that of Blacks".
The point I was making is that race doesn't make a person violent. The theory I was trying to present was that murder is often the highest among the poor, young, single men. It isn't that poor, young, single men are inherently more violent. Rather, my theory is that sometimes young single men are more likely to behave more reckless because of the feeling of a "nothing to lose" mentality. It's more the idea of "I've got very little to lose if I act out".
It is important to look at alot of factors that go into crime. Race is more of a correlation.
Camden isn't a ghost town, but I can't see it recovering short of an outside takeover (the city government has been taken over by the state in the past, but I'm thinking it would need something more akin to a military occupation). I think it is past the point of no return. If it WAS a ghost town it would be better, actually; speculators from Philadelphia would start doing things there.
Washington D.C. probably reached the point of no return during the crack epidemic; the "outside" influence which saved it was the Federal Government.
The car industry in this country is quite strong. The manufacturers simply moved out of Detroit. So was it the black's fault? No, the unions were more responsible for that. But minorities continued drain on all city resources cannot be denied. And anyone who points it out or calls attention to it will be called a bigot by "the machine". It is sickening and is getting old.
Everyone in this country seems quite determined to deny that racism from the other side does not exist. Racism is not a one-way street. It is just that for the last 60 years, the minorities of this country have had better PR people.
Some black kid sneezes and Jesse, Al and liberal whites show up. Some white kid has something happen to him, and no one shows up. No mystery here.
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