The rust belt has been losing population for two decades while the south and southwest have been gaining.
The usual reason given is the fact that heavy industry left the region and there were “no jobs”.
There is something wrong with this explanation, but first some stats.
This graphic:
Chart shows how population has shifted from Cleveland. One could show similar data for Buffalo, Rochester or many other such urban centers. Detroit is an especially sad case with population down to about half of its peak.
So, people move to Arizona or New Mexico, for “jobs”. What jobs? Before people moved there the regions were desert. It’s still desert. Manufacturing didn’t relocate to these regions the way some of it did in a prior period when industries moved to the south to escape unions.
So the influx of people has to have created jobs. Of course a rising population needs services and the exurban sprawl has fueled work in the building trades, but what else?
Many of the new jobs must be in the knowledge industries. These don’t require much in the way of infrastructure, unlike steel or autos. They don’t need railroads or nearby suppliers or even supplies of water or other resources. All they need are some office buildings and a telecommunications network.
Well Cleveland has office buildings and a telecommunications network. It is just easy to build a new building in Cleveland as in Phoenix (although labor rates may be cheaper in Arizona). In addition to the lack of jobs, people cite the nice climate. But Phoenix doesn’t have a “nice” climate. It’s in the desert and no one goes outside during the summer. How is this different than Cleveland where people don’t go outside during winter blizzards?
Cleveland also has rivers, trees and four seasons. Cleveland has lots of old, affordable housing which could be revived, or replaced. Perhaps this might cost slightly more than a new exurban McMansion, but perhaps not.
So why the shift from the rust belt? I don’t have the answer, but I suspect that the glib reasons usually given are only a small part of the picture. There have to be underlying government policies which are favoring the migration. These can range from implicit subsidies of new development through tax breaks to developers though favorable support of infrastructure development. The US will pay for a new superhighway to a housing development, but won’t pay for upgrading of roads in an existing city.
So has the migration just happened or have their been some deliberate policies put in place? What happens when the water situation gets critical? Will people then start to think about moving back to compact communities where they are not dependent on cars and cheap energy?
