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Why are these cities so empty? — 32 Comments

  1. I really don’t have a clue, but I can tell you my experience.

    I lived in Tucson for a year back in 2003, and my impression even then was that the city was empty. I absolutely loved it, but it was impossible not to note how there was no one at the bus-stops, no one on the streets, barely anyone at the movies. There was a mall I used to go to (can’t recall its name), and I swear every time I went the place was empty. I used to say, when I lived there, that Tucson was a huge ghost town.

    My other impression was that 75% of the city was Mexicans; the other 25% were college kids from UA. You get on a bus, there’s a few college kids and the rest are Mexican workers – keeping to themselves, obviously poor, and no bother to anyone. I rather liked them, to be honest.

    That brings me to my other observation, which is that I could never understand how Tucson seemed so clean and (relatively) prosperous, but at the same time seemed overwhelmingly populated with poor immigrant workers. There has to be a factor I was missing.

    In any case, for anyone who has been to Tucson, the ranking of #1 emptiest city will be no surprise at all. But at the same time, Tucson does not seem like a ravaged, depressed, or poor place. It actually seems kind of vibrant and thriving – everyone minds their own business and goes about their business, as it were. I would not mind living there at all (the rents are cheap as dirt).

  2. I hear you about Detroit, neoneo. I’m a Michigander, and I’m honestly surprised that Detroit isn’t in the top five.

  3. The measurement is by vacancy rates (rental and homeowner) and it seems to be for the city proper, not the metro area. Both atlanta and memphis have pretty low income city areas, and tend to hollow out as people follow jobs to the burbs. Since the suburban rents and housing prices have dropped, why live in the city.

    The so called city center of the Arizona cities have always been hollow. They grew briefly in the 1950’s along the older city development model, which was rapidly superseded by the suburban growth.

    Despite the best efforts of the new-urbanist crowd, the old factors of crime, high taxes and poor schools will keep people out of the cities.

  4. Why are these cities so empty?

    Well, two are in the rust belt. Are the current numbers higher than they were 10 years ago?

    One is in Arizona, which, along with Cali and Florida were among the worst four states hit by the housing bust. Tucson vastly overbuilt, and still hasn’t recovered.

    Atlanta and Memphis, can’t answer that.

    But realize that “empty” means they got substantially overbuilt, not that people left or anything.

    Detroit, on the other hand, is getting empty because people are <i?leaving.

    Clearly, The Great Big 0 needs to implement a program to fill those houses and apartments with freeloading Democrats.

  5. (1) White flight explains a lot.

    Atlanta is 54% black, compared to 30% for the state of Georgia as a whole.

    Memphis is 61% black, compared to 17% for the state of Tennessee as a whole.

    People, of all races, ethinicities and creeds, want to live among people who look and think like them. There’s nothing wrong with that.

    Also, a heavily black population brings in higher crime rates and poorer schools, unless you’re wealthy enough to insulate and/or gentrify.

    (2) Immigration explains an awful lot as well.

    Arizona, because of geography and poor border defense, has been one of the go-to states for illegals for a long time.

    Last I checked, the city is about a third Hispanic. That, combined with the geography, means a lot of illegals.

    The illegals drive out low- and unskilled labour. One answer. Also, once the economy takes a dive, many illegals self deport and many of the legal residents and citizens either move to other states or go to Mexico.

  6. Detroit would be the “winner” but for a few “mitigating” circumstances. If you want to call them that.

    “Unemployment in the Motor City almost reached 30 percent in 2009. According to one estimate, the city had 90,000 abandoned or vacant lots or residential homes in 2010. One of the reasons the city is not at the top of this list is that the city had so many vacant properties that a huge portion of them were demolished. Regardless, at 17.2 percent, the rate of rental vacancy is still the third highest rate in the nation. ” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44005383/ns/business-real_estate/t/americas-sickest-housing-markets/#.TqCX0nLdLxU

    Professor Allen Goodman in 2004:
    “Detroit’s households plummeted in each of the last three decades. The city lost more than 64,000 households in the 1970s, 59,000 in the 1980s and an additional 38,000 households in the 1990s. As families vacated dwellings, many owner-occupiers and landlords delayed maintenance and repairs, and eventually abandoned the buildings. From 1970 to 2000, more than 160,000 dwellings left the Detroit housing stock. In 30 years, Detroit lost almost as many dwellings as Cleveland has now. ” http://www.econ.wayne.edu/agoodman/RESEARCH/PUBS/a09-87052.htm

    and most recently,

    “The Detroit Data Collaborative’s block-by-block analysis of about 343,849 residential parcels found that about 64 percent contained occupied housing, nearly 10 percent had vacant homes and more than 26 percent were empty lots. …

    The survey conducted in August and September found 219,511 occupied homes, 33,529 vacant homes and 91,488 vacant lots.” he Detroit Data Collaborative’s block-by-block analysis of about 343,849 residential parcels found that about 64 percent contained occupied housing, nearly 10 percent had vacant homes and more than 26 percent were empty lots.” http://blog.mlive.com/news/detroit_impact/print.html?entry=/2010/02/survey_a_third_of_all_detroit.html

    Fifty unbroken years of Democrat party therapy.

  7. I don’t believe that Detroit is not the most empty. I was just looking into this yesterday. I found a Youtube clip “Detroit – Building the Green City ” that said it has 40 sq miles of abandoned property, larger than all San Francisco.

    The WSJ says there a 90,000 abandonded properties in Detroit, and that they have plans to demolish 10,000 over the next few years.

    “Detroit Shrinks Itself, Historic Homes and All ” May 14,2010 WSJ

    Romney’s boyhood mansion is to be demolished.

    For a close up look at Detroit, see Youtube clip “Detroit in RUINS! (Crowder goes Ghetto) ”

    to see a short video of beehives, a horse and an orchard in the CITY of Detroit see Youtube clip “Detroit Farm” 0:46 sec.

  8. The top four have very large populations of poor and minority population. Argueably these would have been the same people who would get sub-prime loans and later default on them.

  9. http://www.redstate.com/lineholder/2011/04/01/the-georgia-legislative-black-caucus-and-the-theory-of-white-flight/

    The theory of “white flight” originates from the 1950s and 1960s. It contends that financial institutions owned or operated primarily by white people were willing to lend housing funds to white people seeking to live in the suburbs but refused to do the same for black people. This led to redlining, mortgage discrimination, racially-restrictive covenants, and environmental racism , “all of which deny black people their chance to obtain the American dream”.

    The theory of “white flight” also supports the belief that suburbanization by white people leads to urban decay. Urban decay is described as “the sociological process whereby a city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude – depopulation, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings, high local unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime, and a desolate, inhospitable city landscape. White flight’s draining of a city’s tax base is one cause”

    notice how it supports a “belief”.

    but also, notice that they want to blame a decline on the fact that the whites aren’t there getting privilege.

    Thats not it…

    most people could care less what color their neighbor is in a city of over a million people, they care what their neighbor DOES…

    and the truth is that what happens is not reported in the papers or recorded or measured as most people dont report it as it makes a cost more expensive and the result is nothing…

    so whats not in the news is how the store owner is now always looking out for petty thieves, and chasing them… you know, after a while he notices the difference.. he sees the high expense in his loss claims.. and he notices who he or his employees have to chase or bar from the shops.

    the people walking down the street notice who gets chased or yelled at. you see who throws the punches or threats fast on public transportation.

    and you then notice that before, you didn’t notice… that is, your privacy bubble on your day trip used to not be broken… you talk to your neighbors and you find out someone you saw but never talked to had their face smashed in as two kids pistol whipped him on Sunday afternoon on the way home from the supermarket.

    Even more telling of how much emphasis is being placed on the theory of “white flight” is this description of a book written by Kevin Kruse entitled White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism.

    Challenging the conventional wisdom that white flight meant nothing more than a literal movement of whites to the suburbs, this book argues that it represented a more important transformation in the political ideology of those involved.

    In a provocative revision of postwar American history, Kruse demonstrates that traditional elements of modern conservatism, such as hostility to the federal government and faith in free enterprise, underwent important transformations during the postwar struggle over segregation.

    Likewise, white resistance gave birth to several new conservative causes, like the tax revolt, tuition vouchers, and privatization of public services.

    Tracing the journey of southern conservatives from white supremacy to white suburbia, Kruse locates the origins of modern American politics.

    quite a revision…

    and whats the solution? communist housing where the state tells you where you can live and when you can move?

    probably… which is why the spravka is written to support that end, without mentioning the end..

    though in the case above, it was about redistricting… but that too is a case of where do we choose to live… and then power people wanting to draw lines for THEIR race reasons of selection of gain…

    peoples reasons for moving are pretty simple… and MOST (not all like administrators or marxists would say), can fit into some main categories.

    barring change of life in either moving in with a loved one to care for them, etc.. or military, etc..

    most people move for safety, costs, taxes, freedom, opportunity…

    thats it…

    and most people have a schema…

    and that schema says, MS13 needs what population to find people in?

    the bloods need what population to find new members in?

    is there any concentrated population of the people who dont have those elements joining them once the population is high enough?

    does this mean whites dont have gangs? i dont know, la cosa nostra comes to mind… but they tend to be good neighbors comparatively…

    how about the tong? think they are not in flushing ny or canal st china town? think again… but again… how do they do business?

    how bout the yakuza?
    now, how about the Jamaican posse’s?

    if you look at these places, and you dont get into inane race arguments…

    you can see that EVERYONE moves for those reasons… you talk to African people living in Harlem, and they will tell you they want to get away from their own neighbors!!! and then they will recite a litany of crap they would rather never have known.

    sad part is some of them are good people who are stuck, and others are part of the problem itself too talking in irony

    most of it all has to do with jobs…
    suburbian jobs are mostly supported by certain industries in certain areas.

    so kentucky tenesee area is tobaco and coal… so there is little work… in fact tenesee area has been the most depressed since i have known its economics through family who now live out that way…

    many of these people were deposited much like stones and bolders were deposited by the rolling ice sheets of the frozen tundra!!!!

    that is, a factory trying to get away from urban costs, and tax theft… moved to more rural areas… this upsets the economy in those areas, and at first is seen generally good…

    but then… they decide they need more stuff, and so hit the companies for taxes and so on…

    and as with my dad… he went from jersey to kentucy… with the company… but the company then went to mexico… he is deposited..

    and now the area was not as viable as it was as it was boom bust and a new population is there… and on top of it, the illegal aliiens are also migrating into those places to find work and a life… they undercut, and so depress salaries more…

    and even worse… the equalization in the schools makes the people of the area unemployable…

    (you should see how my boss operates, and makes me out to be incompetent as if i am the boss… she says i have to manage her, but is also a feminist on guard for patriarchal competition… heads i win tails i lose, and is a slave to the boss as she cant work anywhere else and get that kind of salary!)

    did you see obamas new thing where now they are claiming california did not equally teach the kids as the africans and spanish illegals arent scoring with the whites and chinese…

    and in Australia, white flight is happening to get out of Chinese areas as the white kids are scoring bottom in school roles… so moving will get them into a higher position in a different school.

    but you dont see them claiming that the Chinese are the oppressors and that the state favored the Chinese (and Ashkenazi Jews for that matter) with a better curriculum.

    hey…all you have to do is look up the soviet unions games with race politics in the history books… you then will find out a whole lot of stuff that otherwise, you believe or think was some natural confluence.

    for instance… in a different topic to avoid argument… neo has talked about the cuban missile crisis and so on… and the whole narrative is based on what you can see, and does not look into any back history.

    for instance.. what was being said on back channels? that the missiles were tactical, not strategic… did kennedy know otherwise? yes. HOW did he know? what ELSE did he know?

    she and no one else mentions Penkovsky.
    who is penkovsky?

    Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky was a colonel with Soviet military intelligence (GRU) in the late 1950s and early 1960s who informed the United Kingdom and the United States about the Soviet Union placing missiles on Cuba, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis

    now why is he not in the discussion? why dont we include what he told kennedy when we try to explain kennedy…

    from Penkovsky we KNEW that Khrushchev would cave!!!! through him we knew that the back channel was lying… so any explanations as to Kennedy not knowing, or much of the explanations dont fit if you knew that

    well, there is also similar stuff for the civil rights movement… which for socialists and islam has been a cash cow and a power wedge…

    penkovsky dies as he refused to exfiltrate and Adolf Tolkachev also dies… as both were exposed by Aldrich ames… and Edward Howard

  10. ack…
    didnt realize it would come out that long..

    sorry!!!!!!! that was NOT intended..

    though one last thing..
    another reason for the emptiness is the collapse of the white populations who have been answering the call of feminism and have below replacement birth rates…

    one of the reasons for the need to have poor people get houses in these suburbian areas was to “hide the decline”… just as open borders has done too… (ergo THIS year spanish babies exceed Caucasian ones, not 2050).

    you see.. three generations of less than 1.3 birth rates along race lines as the women went to college, put off marriage, and then waited to long, or couldn’t afford it as they were not on welfare…

    and the population in the suburbs was falling fast…

    according to demographic information, there is going to be a lot more empty homes and such in these areas in the next 20 years as the artificial high numbers of boomers die out…

    and the collapsed population who didnt replace themselves, remains.

    Despite these large increases in the number of persons in the population, the rate of population growth, referred to as the average annual percent change,1 is projected to decrease during the next six decades by about 50 percent, from 1.10 between 1990 and 1995 to 0.54 between 2040 and 2050. The decrease in the rate of growth is predominantly due to the aging of the population and, consequently, a dramatic increase in the number of deaths. From 2030 to 2050, the United States would grow more slowly than ever before in its history.

    http://www.census.gov/population/www/pop-profile/natproj.html

    People born during the Baby Boom will be between 36 and 54 years old at the turn of the century. In 2011, the first members of the Baby Boom will reach age 65, and the Baby Boom will have decreased to 25 percent of the total population (in the middle series).

    As the Black; Asian and Pacific Islander; American Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut; and Hispanic-origin populations increase their proportions of the total population, the non-Hispanic White population proportion would decrease.

    why is that so? why would one race precipitously decline, and not even keep up with others whose numbers are less?

    what disease is killing them off so fast in only three generations after more than 200 years of growth?

    Non-Hispanic Whites, the slowest growing group, are likely to contribute less and less to the total population growth in this country.

    Although non-Hispanic Whites make up almost 75 percent of the total population, they would contribute only 35 percent of the total population growth between 1990 and 2000.

    This percentage of growth would decrease to 23 percent between 2000 and 2010, and 14 percent from 2010 to 2030.

    The non-Hispanic White population would contribute nothing to population growth after 2030 because it would be declining in size.

    so what will happen to all those houses out in suburbia and in the country? good thing they moved manufacturing…

    read that again

    White population would contribute nothing to population growth after 2030 because it would be declining in size.

    after 2030, that one race will be declining? they just dont want to live any more? they arent having babies enough to even count?

    could that be why politicians dont want to bother paying attention and are getting on the good side of the demographics by coming up with policies.

    if whites are no longer going to even be contributing to the population and are in decline in less than 20 years, why all the affirmative action? why disenfranchise the men?

    ah…
    does it matter? as its done and there is nothing that can be done, as no population recovers from that rate held too long…

    in 20 years a lot of those homes bought by boomers will be empty, and not just from housing bubble…

    the old residents are leaving, the new ones are here and the politicos are catering to what will be alive, not gone…

  11. Life is becoming more competitive than ever. Business cycles and especially speculative over-reaching are taking their toll. The federal government and a bloated union culture, like a black hole, with malfeasant (is that a word?) deficit spending and inappropriate involvement in the business sector and economy are sucking a significant proportion of GNP away from critical economic resources. Read Thomas Sowell (and others), it’s not that complicated in one sense. Also, life ain’t perfect…

  12. art, I have been reading for quite some time about what you have stated above. There are similar goings on in Europe.

    I am a boomer, 59. What I see happening, and even more so, the speed at which it is increasing, leaves me with the biggest regret I have in my life now. As much as I love my children, and my grandson, I honestly wish they were never born.

  13. Here are some interesting numbers:

    St. Louis (1950): 856,796
    St. Louis (today): 319,294

    Detroit (1950): 1,849,568
    Detroit (today): 713,777

    Cleveland (1950): 914,808
    Cleveland (today): 396,815

    I was as surprised about Detroit as many of you, but neither St. Louis nor Cleveland near the top? These are cities that lost around 60% of their population since 1950.

  14. In the next few years it is very likely that we will be ‘downsizing,” and as part of that process we will be moving from the suburbs outside Washington, D.C to a less expensive area and, for that reason, probably not closer to a big city but likely farther away from one, or even to a small town.

    But, in traveling around the country and passing through very small towns, and even smaller “bend in the road” settlements, and picturing what life must be like in those communities, or in a “community” of a few small houses (some one storey examples of which look to be about 500-750 square feet in total volume), or even trailers sited next to on another along an otherwise empty road, I must admit that the thought of moving to the real “country” is not very appealing.

    In this context, an interesting book I once read on city life in Medieval China talked about city vs. country life–in the country everyone knew who you were and virtually everything about you, and you were living in a fish bowl, with nosy relatives (who likely lived with you in an extended family) and neighbors constantly observing you and poking their noses into your business (I believe this poking in China was much more energetic and intrusive than here in the West, due to particularly Chinese notions concerning appropriate behavior and the limits of personal privacy, but the basic idea still applies), and this “country life” was virtually unchanging from generation to generation, and there was little new. By moving to the city, on the other hand, you not only gained a measure of and perhaps almost total anonymity and corresponding privacy, but you also entered into a much more interesting and stimulating environment, full of all sorts of new possibilities and possible experiences and you could do things in the city–good or bad– that you could not do in the country. Another book dealing with Western views of the idea of the “city” vs. “country life” talked about the prevalent image people had of “country people” as being more virtuous, and the city as a center of sin and depravity.

    Well, a lot of people moved from the dumb old stultifying country to the exciting cities and it looks like this experiment–all sorts of new experiences with pollution of all sorts, with violence, drugs, and street crime, traffic and noise, the impersonality of it all–neighbors who didn’t have a clue about who you were or what your name was or cared, and who couldn’t care less if you died in your house and got eaten by your pets–topped off by a whole cornucopia of nuttiness and perversity–has, for a lot of people, been a failure, and many of them are, it seems, headed back out to the stick in the mud, up tight country.

  15. OK, I admit that I don’t want to live in Atlanta TX. pop.7,500, ever again. However, with Amazon and on-line used book dealers, Internet in general, and then much cheaper small-town housing, small-town or rural life does not look so bad.

  16. “However, with Amazon and on-line used book dealers, Internet in general, and then much cheaper small-town housing, small-town or rural life does not look so bad.”

    A small town is the best kind of environment in which homo sapiens has evolved to live.

  17. Too bad it is politically incorrect to honestly speak your mind about a number of things.

    I lived just outside of a small city in a rural neighborhood for many years. The population is about 55,000. In town is a very large mall, every franchise restaurant you can name and some great local ones, the major home DIY stores, electronics and computer stores, office supply stores, an array of car dealerships, foreign and domestic. What you can’t get locally, which is very little, can be brought to your front door by UPS and Fed Ex. Broadband Internet service and cable TV service are there. You can sit next to your pool or on your back deck naked as a jay bird listening to the birds chirp while watching squirrels and chipmunks, surrounded by trees and mountains and the accompanying great vistas. Things happened and now I am surrounded by concrete, asphalt, tall buildings, and way too much traffic and turmoil. Carry me back.

  18. I know technology plays a big role in making people lead more easily mobile lives. Anyone remember long distance phone calls you took on the hallway phone and everyone in the house had to be quiet because it was a big deal and expensive?

    But as to why people leave certain areas more than others, i’d say you’ll likely find the answer by adding the areas number of democrat politicians to how many minutes it takes you to drive to where you used to work.

  19. I was born in KC, and I have seen the city’s decline, too. KC is actually 2 cities, KC, MO and all the rest being Johnson County KS. KC, KS is actually further away from KC, MO. But I digress.

    KC MO’s largest employer is the federal government. Johnson County, which is where the whites take flight to, is home to the largest collection of Mall Graveyards. I don’t know if this phenomenon is the tell for most other empty cities in the US, but driving through Shawnee Mission and Leawood and Olathe, all I can think is “Here is where shopping centers go to die.” And they keep building new ones.

    KC is as misgoverned as any major city in the US, with incompetence going hand in hand with the fact that credentialed, black women seem to be in charge. Stupid, bloated AND corrupt. The things they waste money on in KCMO makes my brain hurt.

  20. on another note…
    the new soviet union of europe, russia, and asia is comeing together nicely as the old powers and such return… as they never left.

    Belarus KGB Gets New Powers Amid Growing Anger

    abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/belarus-kgb-powers-amid-growing-anger-14736900

    I guess its just in time for the war…
    so far things have gone the way i have said they will over the past five years…

    sad thing is once again, i am saying, if nothing changes, then the outcome is a given… well, nothings changed and we are so close to something and ignorant.

    we are much like QUASIMODO believing the crowd loves us and that the hatred is just a few people and so on… so stupid we are we believe DECLARED enemies who never declared otherwise, are our friends…

    the new law lifts restrictions on the KGB’s use of weapons, gives KGB officers the authority to break into residences and offices

    calling for an anti-government protest can lead to a three-year prison sentence

    want a blow your mind read for free?
    go here:
    http://www.scribd.com/doc/63330828/8/An-Operation-Called-CKTAW

    when it comes up, go to chapter one, and read on… and note how many events and things that the public story does not match the back story…

    a teaser highlight?

    well, you will learn of bezzubyye…
    who or what is that?

    well, they are the KGB guys who break into safes and such… the term means “the men with no teeth”… why dont they have teeth? well the equipment they use and put their face to us highly radioactive… so they lose their teeth, and nerves and die early.

    but they do get the job done…

    in fact in one case, a person was told not to put a drop divice in a safe. he did, they broke in… and what did they do? they opened it and sprinkled the paper with nuclear powder. then put it back… the tube was transferred.

    for a very long time the person who the safe belonged to sat next to it back at Langley, and was slowly being poisoned by radiation… enough radiation to set off a machine over 10 feet away!!! not to mention any one handling it could get some… (they have a long history of using radiation for stomach cancer, toxins, and even assassinations… open up a dentist next to your target and zap them through the walls during the day)

    the POINT of my mentioning this, is to show you to what degree the opponent will go to compared to what we can do given we are an “open society”.

    we are so stupid like Quasimodo, that we even though it cool and trendy to make a red headed soviet spy a winner of a popularity contest!!!!

    Warfare is no longer a matter of chivalry but of subversion, and subversion has its own, special arsenal of tools and weapons. Stanley Lovell writing to Allen Dulles in 1951

    The Game is so large that one sees but a little at a time – Rudyard Kipling,
    Kim

  21. Major reason that Detroit is not number one is coming up in the next 10 days — Devil’s Night.

    This survey measures vacancy. That implies the residential unit could be lived in If the house or apartment is rendered uninhabitable by fire it is no longer in the pool of habitable housing.

    Since there is a tradition of burning vacant houses in Detroit, the unoccupancy rate remains artificially lower than it would be otherwise.

  22. I think the rate of new household formation has slowed down alot since the Great Recession.

    For example, my 24 year old niece got married two years ago. They had been renting, but they just couldn’t save money for a down payment on a home. So this summer my brother and his wife graciously invited them to move back into their home until they save enough for a down payment. They have a 5 bedroom house and their youngest kid is away at college, so it’s no inconvenience. In fact, I think they enjoy having them there. It’s supposed to be a temporary deal, but I don’t think they’re going to pressure them to move out until they’re ready.

    I also know another college educated woman — I’m not sure of her exact age, but I’d estimate she’s probably around 26-29 years old — who has a good career and still lives with her parents. She has never moved out from her parents home.

    I think adult children living with their parents longer is a new trend and probably contributes to the large vacancy rates in those cities.

  23. In Detroit, nature makes short work of houses that are neglected for too long. We used to visit a friend and watched over 6 years as a house near her neighborhood disentegrated. It was only a few years of vacancy before there were good-sized trees sprouting from the garage and you couldn’t navigate the driveway.

    The 40 square miles of abandoned property doesn’t seem like a lot when I think of deep-set properties where the house was close to the street but the property stretched back. Detroit is big – think how it surrounds Highland Park and Hamtramck and runs west – but most of it is residential, single-family homes with decent-sized lots. It’s not like Chicago, with a definite downtown and a lot of people crammed into a little bit of space. The New Center area and around U-D have people out and about, but I remember driving through some really dull and run-down neighborhoods within sight of the Hudson Building back in the mid-’90s.

    Tucson and Toledo seem to have a similar problem: a lot of new homes without a lot of buyers. In Ohio, if you can get into a newer home at today’s prices, why would you buy a fixer-upper in a neighborhood with cracked sidewalks and big old trees that you can’t trim without hiring an expert?

  24. Scott, I think you hit the nail on the head. My newlywed niece and her husband moved to his grandparents’ farm “temporarily” but it looks like they might take over the farm. I have a friend (another spinster teacher) whose parents moved in with her; saves expenses all around.

    It’s definitely strange, though to see these “empty cities” and contrast it with England, where a thinktank has recently suggested that retirees be taxed out of their homes so that young people can have those “wasted” bedrooms.

  25. and in Australia, white flight is happening to get out of Chinese areas as the white kids are scoring bottom in school roles… so moving will get them into a higher position in a different school.

    LOLZ, this is HARDLY new.

    Dead End Drive-In

    It’s not a great movie, but think of it allegorically and you’ll find deeper meaning than the low-budget schlock it appears to be on the surface.

    I was as surprised about Detroit as many of you, but neither St. Louis nor Cleveland near the top? These are cities that lost around 60% of their population since 1950.

    Why is any of this surprising to you? The 1970s happened, dude! Ever hear of it? I suggest you get decadal numbers for those cities. Then look at the decadal numbers for Houston and Dallas and NOLA and Atlanta and all four of the Florida major metro areas (Miami-WPB, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville).

    As heating prices went up, and the rust belt rusted, people moved south. Not only to flee the stupid dem policies, but things in general… Americans are known for packing their shit up and moving somewhere else “to make a new start”. It happened in the Dust Bowl era and it happened again in the Rust Belt era.

    It’s in our genes — rather obviously, if you think about it: **ALL** our ancestors were people who said ‘This place SUCKS!! I’m going somewhere else where it might be different!’.

    Hell it even explains “white flight”, if you think about it: Black people are among the only ones who, for the most part, DID NOT get here by being mobility-minded. Not saying that’s an answer, but it may well be an idea worth testing for validity.

    ================================
    Regarding Detroit, this may be of interest:

    Abandoned Detroit

    The pictures that I find MOST disturbing is the two libraries.

    The idea that they would abandon an entire LIBRARY full of books is just insane. That is an entirely ephed up government.

  26. Why is any of this surprising to you?

    Sorry, thoughtus interruptus, there.

    My meaning was that it happened a LONG time ago. The areas have had plenty of time to tear down the old, abandoned structures leaving much less “emptiness”.

  27. Things happened and now I am surrounded by concrete, asphalt, tall buildings, and way too much traffic and turmoil. Carry me back.

    LOL.

    I’ve noticed, over the years, that there appear to be two types of people: The ones who want it Different and the ones who want it The Same.

    The ones who want it The Same seek an adult-living area much like that which they grew up in.

    If they lived in NYC, they cannot imagine living, or wanting to live, in a small town. If they grew up in Live Oak, FL, they cannot imagine wanting to live in a place like Orlando, where it’s a half-hour drive just to get to the 7-11 and back.

    For these people (and I’m one of them), they don’t seek to live in the same place — in many areas things have either shrunk (the subject of this piece) or they have grown tremendously (cities in FL are a prime example). No, the goal is to find someplace that’s about the same size — if your hometown had 10,000 people in it when you were growing up, that seems “just about right”, and you’re going to find yourself in a town as an adult that is the same size, roughly.

    Then there are the ones who want it Different. These people seek the opposite of what they grew up in.

    For them, if they grew up in Live Oak, FL, then they want to be in NYC. They want the vibrancy, the 24/7 nature of the city, the “cultural opportunities”, and so forth.

    If they grew up in NYC, well, Live Oak just seem like Heaven. They don’t WANT the hustle and bustle, the endless lines, the feeling that they are nothing but an ant in a giant anthill. They WANT a place where they can go out on the street and be a mile from home and be very likely to bump into someone they know. They WANT the slow pace and the easygoing, lowered demand that a small town brings.

    ===================

    There’s nothing wrong with either of these, but it does seem to be a prevalent distinction in people, I think. Probably a great psychology or sociology doctoral thesis in there.

  28. I understand that some houses in Detroit are now up on an internet auction site, with a starting bid of $500.

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