What the Rust Belt Can Teach Us About White Flight, Gentrification, and Brain Drain

With a focus on why people leave, we ignore at least half of the migration story.

Theme: Ironic demographics

Subject Article: "Positive contact or 'white flight'?: why whites in diverse places are more tolerant of immigration"

Other Links: 1. "Brain Gain in America’s Shrinking Cities."
2. "Urban Decline in Rust-belt Cities."
3. "What White Population Growth in Detroit Means."
4. "The Legacy Cities Partnership."
5. "This Is Sprawl, Pittsburgh Edition."
6. "Census estimate shows Pittsburgh population decreasing."
7. "Gentrification and Residential Mobility in Philadelphia."
8. "A Self-Interested Approach to Migration Crises: Push Factors, Pull Factors, and Investing In Refugees."
9. "Does development reduce migration?"

Postscript: "Danes fleeing the big cities":

It’s mostly families with children who have made the move out of the urban areas in order to find a more affordable place to live, although they don’t tend to stray too far from the cities in order to maintain their jobs.

But despite the exodus, the capital and Aarhus are still growing, although that has more to do with immigration and an increase in births than urbanisation.

The supposed "urban age" is a lot of hype. Take immigrants out of the population equation and the United States has an epidemic of shrinking cities, including New York and Los Angeles. Americans are fleeing big cities, too.