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Originally Posted by Tuckerman
Well, this is more complicated. Each metro area has a slighty different story with regard to unemployment and job growth over time. Looking at time trends with multiple variables is alway complex and single explanations rarely apply. E.g. in the Atlanta metro the unemployment rate has gone down steadily from 10.5% in 2009 to 2.9% at present. Its high overall job growth is probably partly accounted for by this factor. But other factors such as strong general and even-based population growth from migration foreign and domestic, as well as business relocations to the area have contributed to the picture.
As a sun-belt city it shares many of the characteristics of the current growth patterns in Texas. There are many indications that these particular patterns are still quite active and may be so for some time to come. Nonetheless. historically we have seen patterns of city growth that reflect several key demographic factors in the US and other industrial countries. That history almost always shows that at some point in time the extraordinary growth pattern slows and/or stops and the cities affected reach a stage of population stability. The "raw" and the "cooked" if you will.
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I think the Major Sun belt cities have several more decades to go before reaching a stable point like NYC
Figuring out where each city is going to max is really more or less impossible to say unless you are an expert on a wide range of subjects and a very good guesser to boot. And of course the calculus behind why people are moving to places and not change all the time because of technology, economics and culture.
Assuming nothing extreme changes, and of course the ebb and flow of recessions and growth periods I think you'll see what I consider Phase 1 sunbelt growth mature and level off in Florida, Houston/Dallas , California in the next couple of decades. Certainly by 2050.
Phase 2 sunbelt, your Arizona's, Nevada's, Austin, Denver North Carolina, Tennessee etc, will level off a decade or two later.
At that point I expect rapid growth rent-seeking to be pushed into the inter- mountain west. Idaho, Montana, Utah, Dakota's, Nebraska, maybe even Anchorage
This will be the last part of the country to develop for a number of reasons mostly its the farthest from the ocean and other transportation hubs and is a difficult place to live without modern technology and capitol That will take us well into next century.
Obviously other cities might suddenly explode or regions might find themselves the hub of some new yet unknown industry that may change that flow but I think generally that is what we will see happen.
Now where will the USA level off population wise? Overall I think somewhere around 500-600 million.
But once again that is assuming we dont have some major cultural change that once again promotes high levels of childbirth. Or maybe some new revolutionary technologies or public programs will change the affordability of raising a kid immensely thus leading to a baby boom.
Who knows.
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