Date: 2024-10-31 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00022810
SMALL TOWN AMERICA
DECLINING, DYING AND DEAD
Why I Think The Midwest Is Going To Have Tons Of Abandoned Cities Soon ...I can’t believe most people haven’t figured this out. Oh, and “cities” is a loose term here.
DECLINING, DYING AND DEAD
Why I Think The Midwest Is Going To Have Tons Of Abandoned Cities Soon ...I can’t believe most people haven’t figured this out. Oh, and “cities” is a loose term here.
Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash
Original article: https://medium.com/@ossiana.tepfenhart/why-i-think-the-midwest-is-going-to-have-tons-of-abandoned-cities-soon-e71cefc45e6
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Migration has been a feature of history for ever, so the idea of people moving is not new. However, this is a thoughtful piece and and interesting.
There are, of course, changes in migration behavior and migration patterns over time. My own parents migrated within the British Isles. I migrated more broadly from the UK to Canada to the United Sates, and then around the United States. Young Americans are migrating to the Far East, to Europe and everywhere. People from the global 'South' are trying to migrate into Europe and North America.
It is normal human behavior to make the best of ones life ... and that often means some form of migration.
I remember, on my first visit to North Americs being surprised by the idea that there were 'ghost cities' ... places where all the population had moved away. There was little like this in Europe, but it was quite common in the Canadian and American Wesr. In 1960 I visited relatives who had migrated from the UK to Canada in the early years of the 20th century. The family had crossed Canada from Montreal to Alberta with '2 teams of 6' in covered wagons in 1906 and had 'homesteaded' in a place called Rocky Mountain House in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. About 50 miles West of Rocky Mountain House there was a town that had been developed next to a mine, but when the mine closed, the town was completely abandonned. When I visited Rocky Mountain House in 1960, the local population was celebrating the arrival of a 'black top' road the year before. Before that the road ... about 50 miles ... from Red Dear to Rock Mountain House was a gravel road.
The layout of population centers in North America is different from Europe and other places around the world which have had high population density for a long time. North America has become 'built up' largely in the automobile era while other population centers around the world were more compact and built up in ways more suited to walking and horse transport.
North America is highly productive within the factory ... but getting from home to factory or office in the United States is ridiculously time consuming and inefficient. This going to change ... in fact it is already in the process of changing. The solution in the past has been to build more and more roads and in the process destroying communities that were usually poor and powerless albeit vibrant in a human way. The invention of the automobile was the driver of change in much of the 20th century. It is likely that various innovations around communications technology will have an important role in the changes that will emerge during the 21st century.
One thing is clear. The way and the places people live and work at this point in history is far from as good as it could be and should be !!!!!!!!
Peter Burgess
I can’t believe most people haven’t figured this out. Oh, and “cities” is a loose term here.
Written by Ossiana Tepfenhart
June 26th, 2022
Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash
I was reading up on something about a town called Gaylord, Kansas today. I actually forgot what the original topic was. Why? Because I saw a photo of Gaylord’s main street…and it looked like something out of a Wild West movie.
Look at that. Does it even look real to you? It doesn’t look inhabited, and yet, it is. A whopping 87 people still live in the city of Gaylord, though I’d be surprised if that number will increase.
Gaylord is an example of something that is very quietly occurring in many parts of the Midwest and South: rural community collapse.
But wait, aren’t people migrating away from cities?
Photo by Koukichi Takahashi on Unsplash
Yes, it’s true. City life has become increasingly untenable and unaffordable for many families. Speaking as someone who lives right across the GWB, I can tell you that city life is actually pretty rough to live here.
Traffic is terrible, the price of the studio efficiency I live in is crazy, and food prices are also pretty high. If you make under $90,000 a year, you can’t feasibly have a family here. So, it’s not surprising to hear that people are fleeing cities — especially now that work from home is common.
So, what’s actually happening is that people are avoiding big, hyper-dense cities like the one I live in for smaller ones. This is why Denver and even Detroit have seen upticks in populations as of late.
Though people are leaving Los Angeles and New York in droves, it’s important to note that the exodus isn’t fully covered. People are choosing the suburbs and urban suburbs over cities with trains, subways, and chaos.
What people are also running away from are super-small rural towns like Gaylord.
Photo by Asa Rodger on Unsplash
When I mean super-small towns, I mean towns that house under 250 people and are not located near major metropolitan areas. These are towns that are extremely rural, even for people who are “country” by most cityfolk standards.
Most of the towns that fit this bill have been in decline since the 1930s through the 1950s, depending on when most of their locals chose to move to cities. So, they often have more houses and storefronts than they do people.
Though they are in decline, the rate of decline has started to skyrocket. These towns, such as Hamberg in North Dakota, can have as little as 11 people living in them. Others, like Barnard, have as many as 200. The rest of the town is often abandoned.
The moment someone gets a job elsewhere or chooses to go to school, they’re going to leave. And good luck finding someone who wants to live in a town with only a dozen people. Those housing markets are doomed. It’s a basic example of what community collapse looks like.
Why is this happening?
Photo by Diogo Palhais on Unsplash
The idea of running off to the country where you can have a tiny farm and a house where no one bothers you is very appealing…until you actually realize that you need a lot of amenities to remain happy and healthy and sane.
Think of what living in a place like this really means:
- There’s no police force. How’s a town of 11 gonna have cops if there are maybe 50 people in the surrounding towns?
- The chances of having decent internet speeds are extremely low. While the new wireless internet movement might offer some hope, it’s really unlikely that companies would dig new cable routes for classic internet in a place with only 10 people.
- Media is hard to come by as a result. Cellphone service isn’t always a given. I know this because I’ve driven through those areas on a way to a music festival. So, even YouTube might get out of reach in dire circumstances.
- If you don’t fit in or don’t have a job, you won’t eat. When you’re in an area where your entire town fits 200 men, women, and children, it’s going to be hard to get a job if you get fired from the only store in town.
- Speaking of stores, think how far you would have to drive to get to a Wal-Mart or a still-existent shopping mall. This means that you’re basically stuck to Amazon and mail deliveries. If you have an impromptu need for a new dress or set of shoes, that’s a journey.
- If you face an emergency, you’re basically fucked. FEMA will take a lot longer to come by. Getting a doctor’s visit may not even be doable. That’s why 20 percent of all rural counties now have worsening death rates.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
The days when you could always go to a doctor in rural parts of the country are pretty far gone. In fact, one might argue that they were never quite there. I mean, Colonel Sanders made his living helping women give birth about 100 years ago.
Country “doctors” and old school “remedies” are still common in extremely poor parts of the nation. However, people are growing wise to the fact that you can die pretty damn easily if you don’t have access to a trained medical professional.
But, yeah, the quality of life in many parts of the ultra-rural Midwest is not something that people want to stay in, even if they grew up there. Who wants to go back to a town with only 30 people in it?
Though many of those houses in those types of cities are for sale, let’s be honest. How many people do you know would be willing to buy a house for dirt cheap, with limited internet access, dubious healthcare, and almost no entertainment?
So, what does this mean for the rest of the country?
Photo by Andrea Cau on Unsplash
Here’s are my predictions, and why I think it’s going to happen:
- The East and West Coasts are going to be increasingly popular home destinations, but the prices of housing will continue to rise. A lot of foreign investors are “moneyparking” through real estate, so demand will always be high. A lot of people will be priced out, but would choose to stay there.
- Red rural states will hold more political power despite having fewer people. They get the same amount of electoral votes. Thanks for fucking us, America! Then again, after the ramifications of some of these laws fully come up, people are going to reconsider their despots…If they can even vote in 10 years.
- Many parts of the Midwest will be totally abandoned. There’s already a healthcare flight happening thanks to Roe v. Wade, but with many small towns seeing drops in population as high as 10 to 40 percent in a decade, it will explode pretty quickly.
- Travel will need to involve trains and public transit, or smaller towns will die out. We already saw this happen in the 1910s through the 1930s, but it’s going to start to happen again. Travel by car and truck is pretty pricey now. Having transit means having amenities closer to you. Not having transit means you’re isolated in the middle of nowhere.
- There’s going to be a bigger culture divide than before. I already see this happening, and it’s going to be even bigger when it comes to matters of resentment against education or racist beliefs.
- To a point, these abandoned areas may become tourist attractions or get turned into corporate locations. People love abandonia, and corporations love trying to make communities that they own. It wouldn’t shock me if real estate investors buy up these massive swaths of land, rehab them, and add their own amenities to them as a perk for working in specific company headquarters.
- If people are smart, they will try to preserve small town history. Despite me despising suburban life, I can tell you that there is something worth remembering about it. These dying towns are still part of our American identity and deserve to be discussed.
cityslicker