By studying population trends and forecasting models, researchers have come to believe that nearly 15,000 U.S. cities will face noticeable depopulation by 2100.
Populated areas of the cities in question could experience a decline of up to 44 percent.
Projections call for the biggest drops in city populations to occur in the Northeast and Midwest.

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[–] SleeplessCityLights@programming.dev 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

For people who don't know this most cities are built upon the concept that they are constantly growing and receiving more taxes than the year before. It's basically a Ponsi scheme. This works perfectly fine if there is always money coming in. When people and businesses leave the money stops coming in, then everything starts to fall apart quickly. Have you ever wondered why formerly prosperous places like Detroit and Gary went to absolute hell. It's because they started to lose people and business. When the city cost more to operate than what is coming in from taxes, you become the murder capital of America.

[–] GoTeamBoobies@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

www.strongtowns.org Strong Towns helped me understand this pattern, and more importantly, how to fix it

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 days ago (4 children)

The US is also suffering from a low fertility rate, at 1.79 (population replacement rate is 2.1), which we made up for in the 20th century by lots of immigration.

(This is one of the factors that informs the great replacement myth, as non-whites approach outnumbering whites in the US. A vocal minority sees this as a bad thing, especially since whites tend to vote Republican and Blacks tend to vote Democrat).

I find it odd and fascinating that the ownership class is terrified by the notion of a lowering population -- babies allegedly grow up to be workers after all -- but are not willing to pass policy to support child rearing, and depend entirely on tradwife propaganda and restricting contraception access and abortion access.

It's especially a problem since our economy is based entirely on growth, with lots of young people providing support for elders.

The US is not unique with this problem. South Korea, Japan and Italy (actually the whole EU) also have low rates and are trying to implement changes to improve fertility, and so far to little effect.

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 2 points 5 days ago

I find it odd and fascinating that the ownership class is terrified by the notion of a lowering population – babies allegedly grow up to be workers after all

Which is very weird considering that Epstein class is pushing AI to replace workers.

Oh wait, now I know why the Epstein class wants children.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

They want more babies, but don't want to pay anything for it, hence the laws restricting contraception and no support that would potentially increase taxes.

But, the question is, why do they want us to have more babies? And, yes, I mean even specifically white babies. They're hell-bent on replacing workers with machines. More angry people banging at the mansion door seems like a bad idea.

I don't think billionaires are particularly smart.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 3 points 6 days ago

This is not problem. Population needs to decrease

[–] iocase@lemmy.zip 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

To add to this there's an event horizon birth rate of 1.5 children per women. Once you cross the event horizon you never come back out (there might be one or two exceptions technically but I'm quoting someone else here so don't @ me)

The basic loop is once birth rates are that low things are usually pretty bad for parents. Uncertainty about the future, extreme focus on attaining stability where stability is an impossibility. Once you drop below 1.5 for a sustained period of time you never come back out. The people who could fix it (parents) are overworked, underpaid, living in tiny apartments they can barely afford, have to pay more in childcare than rent just to maintain their living situation...

The young can't be the only ones investing in the future...

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

(parents) are overworked, underpaid, living in tiny apartments they can barely afford, have to pay more in childcare than rent just to maintain their living situation…

seems like we're already there

[–] iocase@lemmy.zip 4 points 6 days ago

Yeah if you subtract immigration and first gen immigrants (>14yo at immigration is highly likely to have the same amount of kids as where they're from. <14yo is highly likely to have close to the new host nations family size) the US is already on the other side of the event horizon.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 days ago

I live in a city that 10 years ago was losing population and nowadays it's growing in population.

I honestly preferred ot better when it was losing pops.

Eternal growth is unsustainable

[–] Yaky@slrpnk.net 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

What I don't understand is that the most desirable areas (home price, population growth) in the US are also very prone to natural disasters: floods in Carolinas, fires in S California, hurricanes in Florida, extreme heat in Texas and the southwest. Meanwhile, Great Lakes / rust belt area does not get many disasters, still has seasons, has access to fresh water, and yet, cities/areas populations are slowly decreasing or staying flat.

[–] TheSambassador@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

As someone who loved living in the Midwest, the severity of the winters are usually enough to scare people off. And it got kinda muggy in the summer.

I'd love to end up there, as I didn't mind the weather, but I also worked from home and didn't have to go outside more than when I wanted to.

[–] guyoverthere123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 days ago

50,000 people used to live here... Now, it's a ghost town

[–] jaykrown@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

This is probably a good thing, it's more efficient if people live within larger municipal areas closer to amenities. It's very inefficient if we have small towns everywhere that need their own supplies. I'm not saying we should all live in one massive city, just that at scale, things become more accessible to people.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 0 points 6 days ago

Lot of pro car idiots in this thread.

[–] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 74 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Total lack of social/ecoomic context as I'd expect from PM.

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 1 week ago (2 children)

But sociology and economics are soft sciences, so obviously it's pointless to use and never reflects reality. Unlike physics and engineering, where if it works on paper it will always work for real /s

[–] Rooskie91@discuss.online 4 points 6 days ago

Just ask mechanics! They love engineers!

[–] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, I really wonder about the mentality of people that would read that article and not wonder "what's actually going on." Like shit just kinda happens and we measure it when it does?

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 2 points 6 days ago

yeah, since as we all know, the world is actually hollow. there is nothing going on inside.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 30 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Sounds like the USA needs more immigration.

[–] iocase@lemmy.zip 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

That's a bandaid fix. Everyone is depopulating except like 5 African countries which are going to enter their own negative birth rates in 15 years if they continue developing.

Im Canadian, and India crossed into negative birth rates a few years ago. The median age in India is almost 30 now

With a population of 1.45B people, India has a median age of 29.5 years which makes it the 108/196 oldest country. 24.6% of the demographic are children 0-14 years old, 68.2% are working-age people aged 15-64, and 7.15% are older population aged 65+ years

Source

What this means is

A) average age is going to go up roughly 1 year every 2 years

B) the average age in India will be roughly 38 or so in 20 years

C) their 65+ cohort increases by a huge margin

Eventually even they are too old and you're importing a demographic they desperately want to retain domestically. Same with the Phillipines and other emigrant nations.

At what point are we just colonizing other nations through immigration? When their best and brightest all leave the country to earn more in a foreign country, start a family there, and the only thing they give back is a remittance. Any kids they would have had are citizens of their new home nation and they're probably not going back (statistically the supermajority) while their home country dips into negative birth rates and having never developed industrially to support a massive cohort of elderly people.

Hilariously I could see a point where an immigrant takes any net benefit they provide in a foreign nation and use it to support their own elderly parents and grand parents in their home country. The entire planet one giant retirement home...

[–] trackball_fetish@lemmy.wtf 2 points 5 days ago

Correct. Our government however, thinks they need to die.

[–] tidderuuf@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The USA has plenty of immigration, they just choose to not live where all these towns are depopulating. No one can figure out why.

[–] Malyca@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago

Because it's full of maga idiots?

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

Two men were standing under a tree when it began to rain. One said to the other, "good thing this tree will keep us dry."

"But what happens when the treek is soaked, and it can no longer keep us dry?" Asked the second.

"Don't worry," said the first, "we're in a forest. We'll just run to another tree."

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If it’s a shift from a labour-intensive agrarian economy, that’s to be expected. A similar thing happened in Iceland, and due to the small scale of the country, it is very noticeable. Some 2/3 of the population live in the greater capital area, and beyond that, the countryside is dotted with abandoned farmsteads slowly falling apart.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This has nothing to do with the agrarian transition. These depopulating cities were created by the agrarian transition. They were where people went after they left the rural areas.

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yup, this is likely because large cities have become too expensive, and rural areas have been getting fiber rollouts. With WFH being a viable option for many people, they can live in the boonies where you can get a 1200sqft house for under $200k.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

It's more about regional populations movements. There is no vast movement of people from the cities to the countryside. Rural areas continue to drop in population just as they have for the last century. The rural areas have a higher cost of living when you include job prospects. People can only afford to bid up the housing costs in cities because the jobs pay better than in the sticks.

[–] strawberry_enjoyer42@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 week ago

I long to join them by moving to Canada.

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