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–/+ Urban Decline (and Success) in the United StatesFred Smith and Sarah Allen, Davidson College
Introduction
Any discussion of urban decline must begin with a difficult task – defining what is meant by urban decline. Urban decline (or "urban decay") is a term that evokes images of abandoned homes, vacant storefronts, and crumbling infrastructure, and if asked to name a city that has suffered urban decline, people often think of a city from the upper Midwest like Cleveland, Detroit, or Buffalo. Yet, while nearly every American has seen or experienced urban decline, the term is one that is descriptive and not easily quantifiable. Further complicating the story is this simple fact – metropolitan areas, like greater Detroit, may experience the symptoms of severe urban decline in one neighborhood while remaining economically robust in others. Indeed, the city of Detroit is a textbook case of urban decline, but many of the surrounding communities in metropolitan Detroit are thriving. An additional complication comes from the fact that modern American cities – cities like Dallas, Charlotte, and Phoenix – don't look much like their early twentieth century counterparts. Phoenix of the early twenty-first century is an economically vibrant city, yet the urban core of Phoenix looks very, very different from the urban core found in "smaller" cities like Boston or San Francisco.[1] It is unlikely that a weekend visitor to downtown Phoenix would come away with the impression that Phoenix is a rapidly growing city, for downtown Phoenix does not contain the housing, shopping, or recreational venues that are found in downtown San Francisco or Boston.
There isn't a single variable that will serve as a perfect choice for measuring urban decline, but this article will take an in depth look at urban decline by focusing on the best measure of a city's well being – population. In order to provide a thorough understanding of urban decline, this article contains three additional sections. The next section employs data from a handful of sources to familiarize the reader with the location and severity of urban decline in the United States. Section three is dedicated to explaining the causes of urban decline in the U.S. Finally, the fourth section looks at the future of cities in the United States and provides some concluding remarks.
Urban Decline in the United States – Quantifying the Population Decline
Between 1950 and 2000 the population of the United States increased by approximately 120 million people, from 152 million to 272 million. Despite the dramatic increase in population experienced by the country as a whole, different cities and states experienced radically different rates of growth. Table 1 shows the population figures for a handful of U.S. cities for the years 1950 to 2000. (It should be noted that these figures are population totals for the cities in the list, not for the associated metropolitan areas.)
Table 1: Population for Selected U.S. Cities, 1950-2000
Source: U.S. Census Bureau.
Several trends emerge from the data in Table 1. The cities in the table are clustered together by region, and the cities at the top of the table – cities from the Northeast and Midwest – experience no significant population growth (New York City) or experience dramatic population loss (Detroit and Cleveland). These cities' experiences stand in stark contrast to that of the cities located in the South and West – cities found farther down the list. Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Charlotte, and Nashville all experience triple digit population increases during the five decades from 1950 to 2000. Figure 1 displays this information even more dramatically:
Figure 1: Percent Change in Population, 1950 – 2000
Source: U.S. Census Bureau.
While Table 1 and Figure 1 clearly display the population trends within these cities, they do not provide any information about what was happening to the metropolitan areas in which these cities are located. Table 2 fills this gap. (Please note – these metropolitan areas do not correspond directly to the metropolitan areas identified by the U.S. Census Bureau. Rather, Jordan Rappaport – an economist at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank – created these metropolitan areas for his 2005 article "The Shared Fortunes of Cities and Suburbs.")
Table 2: Population of Selected Metropolitan Areas, 1950 to 2000
* The percentage change is for the period from 1960 to 2000. Source: Rappaport; http://www.kc.frb.org/econres/staff/jmr.htm
Table 2 highlights several of the difficulties in conducting a meaningful discussion about urban decline. First, by glancing at the metro population figures for Cleveland and Detroit, it becomes clear that while these cities were experiencing severe urban decay, the suburbs surrounding them were not. The Detroit metropolitan area grew more rapidly than the Boston, Philadelphia, or New York metro areas, and even the Cleveland metro area experienced growth between 1950 and 2000. Next, we can see from Tables 1 and 2 that some of the cities experiencing dramatic growth between 1950 and 2000 did not enjoy similar increases in population at the metro level. The Phoenix, Charlotte, and Nashville metro areas experienced tremendous growth, but their metro growth rates were not nearly as large as their city growth rates. This raises an important question – did these cities experience tremendous growth rates because the population was growing rapidly or because the cities were annexing large amounts of land from the surrounding suburbs? Table 3 helps to answer this question. In Table 3, land area, measured in square miles, is provided for each of the cities initially listed in Table 1. The data in Table 3 clearly indicate that Nashville and Charlotte, as well as Dallas, Phoenix, and Houston, owe some of their growth to the expansion of their physical boundaries. Charlotte, Phoenix, and Nashville are particularly obvious examples of this phenomenon, for each city increased its physical footprint by over seven hundred percent between 1950 and 2000.
Table 3: Land Area for Selected U.S. Cities, 1950 – 2000
Sources: Rappaport, http://www.kc.frb.org/econres/staff/jmr.htm; Gibson, Population of the 100 Largest Cities.
Taken together, Tables 1 through 3 paint a clear picture of what has happened in urban areas in the United States between 1950 and 2000: Cities in the Southern and Western U.S. have experienced relatively high rates of growth when they are compared to their neighbors in the Midwest and Northeast. And, as a consequence of this, central cities in the Midwest and Northeast have remained the same size or they have experienced moderate to severe urban decay. But, to complete this picture, it is worth considering some additional data. Table 4 presents regional population and housing data for the United States during the period from 1950 to 2000.
Table 4: Regional Population and Housing Data for the U.S., 1950 – 2000
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