The City Is Dying

The ironic geography of dying cities at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Demographic decline.

Subject Article: "Population of rural America continues to fall."

Other Links: 1. "Peak Urbanization."
2. "The Era of Dying Places: Everyone Is Starved for Talent, but Migration Is a Thing of the Past."
3. "Urbanization As Opportunity."
4. "Los Angeles Is Beginning to Look a Lot Like Pittsburgh."
5. "Which Poor Neighborhoods Experienced Income Growth in Recent Decades?"
6. "The Case for More Babies."

Postscript: For example, Los Angeles is dying:

But the most worrisome blow by far is a scathing verdict on Los Angeles’s civic health that was delivered in a one-two punch — the second on Wednesday — by a committee of lawyers, developers, labor leaders and former elected officials who make up something of the Old Guard here. The Los Angeles 2020 Commission presented a catalog of failings that it said were a unique burden to the city: widespread poverty and job stagnation, huge municipal pension obligations, a struggling port and tourism industry and paralyzing traffic that would not be eased even with a continuing multibillion-dollar mass transit initiative.

Their conclusions amounted to an indictment of a city and its culture, a place that the commission said was brimming with talent and resources but was nonetheless falling behind other major cities across the globe.

“Los Angeles is barely treading water, while the rest of the world is moving forward,” the commission said. “We risk falling further behind in adapting to the realities of the 21st century and becoming a city in decline.”

It was a good run.