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De-industrialization and the decline of the manufacturing sector explains nothing. Those things have happened all over the Western world but didn't result in the hollowing out of other cities in the West.
Why would it be less likely? Still doesn't explain why population would be relevant.
Obviously, Australian cities were homogenously white in 1950 (and of mostly British / Irish ancestry). But why does that make it a poor comparison? I thought that was the point of bringing Australia: it had no racial ghettos since it was homogeneous.
I don't get why you don't get it!
Population of Australia 1950: ~ 8 million
Population of US 1950: 152 million, almost 20X larger.
Land mass of Australia: ~ 3 million sq. mi (2.97)
Land mass of US: 3.8 million sq. mi
You don't see that as an apples to say, cornflakes comparison? 5% of the people on 78% of the land area?
Anyway, mooguy wants to see it as American racism and nothing else, so there's no point in continuing the discussion. The fact that it was virtually impossible for there to be white flight in Australia, and only slightly more possible in Canada is obviously beside the point to him.
Like Nei, I'm really not sure what Australia being so much smaller than the U.S. has to do with anything. Deindustrialization and urban disinvestment happen on a metro-by-metro basis, not on a national one. Hence while the size of Australia in 1950 isn't comparable in any way to the U.S., the size of certain metro areas in Australia would be comparable to some U.S. metro areas.
Like Nei, I'm really not sure what Australia being so much smaller than the U.S. has to do with anything. Deindustrialization and urban disinvestment happen on a metro-by-metro basis, not on a national one. Hence while the size of Australia in 1950 isn't comparable in any way to the U.S., the size of certain metro areas in Australia would be comparable to some U.S. metro areas.
I believe I posted the populations of the two largest cites in Australia in 1950. Neither had two million people. Even today, there are only 3 cities there of >2 million, and one, Brisbane, barely is over the mark. Biggest Cities Australia In 1950, Brisbane had 442,000 people. If Australia is like Canada, the city limits take in quite a bit of area that in the US would probably be suburban, e.g. outside of the city.
The other thing is there were no minority people to "flee" from. mooguy is saying it was not deindustrialization; he's saying it's racism and that the US is more racist, which in the case of Australia is really laughable.
If Australia is like Canada, the city limits take in quite a bit of area that in the US would probably be suburban, e.g. outside of the city.
Australia actually isn't like Canada when it comes to this, it's mostly more extreme than the U.S. Cities are split up into what are called "Local Government Areas" Here's a list of the current metro populations, and the population of the core LGA.
Sydney - 4.8 million (169,505 in City of Sydney)
Melbourne - 4.4 million (93,625 in City of Melbourne)
Brisbane - 2.3 million (1,041,839 in City of Brisbane)
Perth - 2 million (20,285 in City of Perth)
Adelaide - 1.3 million (22,393 in City of Adelaide)
In most Australian metros, the core city is quite small, only encompassing the CBD and some nearby residential districts. Brisbane is the major exception. When Australia reports city population, they are actually reporting something similar to a U.S. metro area.
My understanding is that a number of functions which are in the U.S. undertaken by local government are done by the states in Australia, like police, fire, and schools. Local government does deal with roads, bridges, sewers, libraries, parks, and zoning and urban planning, with the outlying municipalities (not called suburb - that just means neighborhood in Australia) being totally independent of the core city.
Population of Australia 1950: ~ 8 million
Population of US 1950: 152 million, almost 20X larger.
Land mass of Australia: ~ 3 million sq. mi (2.97)
Land mass of US: 3.8 million sq. mi
You don't see that as an apples to say, cornflakes comparison? 5% of the people on 78% of the land area?
No, I don't see why it has anything to do with why one country would have more "white flight". You're not explaining why other than just repeating the same "Australia has a lower population and density". Australia's different in that regard, but why that would be relevant, you haven't given a reason.
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Anyway, mooguy wants to see it as American racism and nothing else, so there's no point in continuing the discussion. The fact that it was virtually impossible for there to be white flight in Australia, and only slightly more possible in Canada is obviously beside the point to him.
I thought that was his point; that Australis had no minorities, and therefore no city decline due to white flight. He didn't say nothing else, but the de-industrialization alone explanation is unconvincing for the obvious issue it's not unique to the US.
De-industrialization and the decline of the manufacturing sector explains nothing. Those things have happened all over the Western world but didn't result in the hollowing out of other cities in the West.
The reason I think it was primarily due to racism is because the hollowing out of US cities is fairly unique in the West and the thing that sets the US apart from all other Western countries is it's history of slavery and how it impacted how US cities developed.
There's another issue you're missing; if say, Northern Italian cities de-industrialize, where would the population move to? Southern Italy? Southern Italy is still much poorer and more backward than Northern Italy. Most other developed countries don't have that extreme disparities, but few countries had rapidly growing newer regions (like the US sunbelt) at the same time as de-industralization.
No, I don't see why it has anything to do with why one country would have more "white flight". You're not explaining why other than just repeating the same "Australia has a lower population and density". Australia's different in that regard, but why that would be relevant, you haven't given a reason.
I thought that was his point; that Australis had no minorities, and therefore no city decline due to white flight. He didn't say nothing else, but the de-industrialization alone explanation is unconvincing for the obvious issue it's not unique to the US.
I interpreted his point as it being American racism, as this "hollowing out" of cities didn't happen in Australia (per mooguy, not me).
The population and density are relevant because we're talking about the core of large cities.
I also did say in previous posts that Australia has a history of racism to the present day, and has few minorities to "flee" from in any event. Canada has less history of racism, though I documented some, and also fewer minorities to "flee" from.
I interpreted his point as it being American racism, as this "hollowing out" of cities didn't happen in Australia (per mooguy, not me).
Well, his point seemed to be race or race segregation was the main (or a large) difference between American city patterns vs non-American ones. Non-American cities being more homogeneous would agree with that idea.
I didn't realize for a while you were responding to mooguy as his posts were pages earlier.
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The population and density are relevant because we're talking about the core of large cities.
Well, country-wide statistics don't help. The total country population doesn't tell whether there are large cities; Sydney and Brisbane would have still been among the larger US cities though not largest in 1950 (much larger than any southern city excluding DC & Baltimore), though clearly a smaller country would have fewer large cities. We were focusing on larger cities, but I didn't realize small cities were excluded. Plenty of small cities (< 50,000 people) with a poor core with lots of minorities surrounding by a more affluent white population in the Northeast US. So, yes I was puzzled why city size mattered, too.
What I do think is relevant is overall growth rate: Australia had 8 million in 1950, 24 million today (an increase of 3 times). That's similar though maybe a bit lower than the western US. Both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania have only grown by about 35-40%. Harder to have declining cities when the overall population is booming.
One should note that history of racism does not equate to history of racial segregation in housing. The antebellum South was quite racist, but indications from Census documents are that freedmen lived distributed throughout cities with no particularly dense concentrations to speak of. Perhaps this was because the rights of freedmen were so limited in the South that white families didn't feel threatened in any way by them living nearby
The idea of strict racial segregation in housing - of neighborhoods and cities which were entirely free of black people - was a northern invention. It had its roots in the antebellum period, with Oregon, Illinois, and Indiana all passing black exclusion laws at various points in the early to mid 19th century, but it became most vigorously enforced in the North (and the Appalachian parts of the South) beginning in the 1870s, as Reconstruction began to wane.
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