Population Growth Means a City Is Thriving, or Does It?

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

but still, just about anywhere else in the entire freaking nation has to be considered a step up (even if a very small one) from an englewood or austin, right?

i mean, there can't possibly be any places in america that are worse, from a street violence perspective, than englewood or austin, can there?

I wouldn't be surprised to see them near the top, but I'd be surprised if there weren't worse places out there. Someone look into it!

[PhillyRising]

I don't think a city like Philadelphia could even handle a 10% population increase in a decade much less a year. The traffic region wide is tenuous at best. Our regional highway system is poorly designed and SEPTA is still trying to play catch up with it's infrastructure after decades of neglect. Half of the regional rail car stock is over 40 years old and they have had issues with the new ones. We would need new rail routes built.

I like seeing what has always been here be improved. Slow but sure growth will get us to our eventual goal.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by mhays

There are so many reasons to like growth. Some are specific to SSP types and some not. With growth:
--The city is bigger
--The city is denser (if infill)
--The city has a new/renewed feeling
--The city has more stuff to do and eat
--Air connections improve on average (with wild swings if you're a hub or not)

Also more people = more specialization and higher productivity.

[Chef]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

It's not as if poor blacks in Chicago are moving from Englewood to a ritzy part of Atlanta. They're moving to high-crime, low-income neighborhoods in the south. It's a lateral move at best. It's not uncommon for black Chicagoans to opt for the suburbs over an out of state move, but I think the majority that do choose to relocate are doing so out of state.

Moving may offer a reboot in terms of the culture of violence and criminality that exists in those neighborhoods. Between 1980 and 2005 or so, Minneapolis received a large wave of transplants from the parts of Chicago we are talking about. At first, crime rose sharply here as some of the transplants brought gang culture and violent behavior with them. In the long run though, the kids of the transplants who have grown up in Minneapolis haven't followed in their parents footsteps. Minneapolis today has a similar crime rate as it did in the mid 1960s when it was 3% black which implies that the kids of the transplants are committing crimes at much lower rates than they would have if their families had remained in Chicago. Those kids are often still poor, and living in the least desirable parts of the Twin Cities but they are starting their adult lives on a much more solid foundation than their parents did.

It is likely that the abandonment of these dysfunctional neighborhoods is good for everybody.

[skyscraperpage17]

The problem with a lack of growth for so long is that provincialism begins to take over. Without the constant influx of transplants, you lack people who bring a brand new perspective along with them and can offer creative ways to address problems or grow the city.

Detroit's suffering from this problem now IMO.