
Why Are America’s Three Biggest Metros Shrinking? - prostoalex
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/americas-three-biggest-metros-shrinking/597544/
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maxsilver
Cause major metros are expensive as hell, they usually soft-ban children and
parenting, they are openly hostile to quick/reliable transportation, and
generally depend on lots of labour from other slightly-poorer non-local people
to remain viable.

If you carefully curate your life in such a way as to have very few
responsibilities or needs, city living can be a lot of fun. I get why people
like it, I liked it too. And if you are wealthy, you can buy your way out of a
most of these problems.

But for regular, average people, making regular average wages, city living is
mostly just a long list of painful drawbacks, and most regular people couldn't
afford it even if they were willing to put up with all of that.

~~~
mumblemumble
> soft-ban children and parenting

Could you elaborate on that? My experience thus far as a parent of small
children in one of the 3 metros listed in TFA has only strengthened my resolve
to not move to a small city. They're just so far ahead of the smaller cities
I've looked into on so many things - activities, parks and playgrounds, free
public pre school, ease of locomotion for kids who aren't old and wealthy
enough to drive a car. . .

I'm pretty sure the only thing other places have on us is the square footage
of the house. Which, with so much cool stuff to do out in the world, we don't
really end up making too much use of the square footage we have, anyway.

We go visit the grandparents in a metro of only half a million people, and by
the end of the visit the kids are half crazy from lack of opportunities to get
out of the house.

~~~
throwaway2048
apartments big enough for a family can easily cost the entire sallary of a
middle class person and more, and thats for a 2 bedroom shithole.

You could pay less somewhere else and get a really nice house on mortgage
instead, and actually have something to show for the 40k a year you are
throwing into a black hole

~~~
magduf
Yea, and now you have to have two cars (car payments, insurance, gas, car tax
= $$$), and you have to worry about your kids getting hit by a car when
they're outside of the house, even in their front yard.

Housing in other parts of the country is absurdly expensive too, unless you go
to "low-CoL" locales, but then you run into the problem that there's no jobs
there, or the jobs pay peanuts, so unless you banked a bunch of money while
you were living in the high-CoL area, you're not going to be able to afford
one of those nice houses anyway.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>car payments, insurance, gas, car tax = $$$

This is only as expensive as you make it (gas notwithstanding).

>and you have to worry about your kids getting hit by a car

There's a really simple solution to this. Don't worry. There's plenty of
things to irrationally worry about in a city too if you want to do that.

>Housing in other parts of the country is absurdly expensive too,

Outside of places where rich people congregate they're really not.

>locales, but then you run into the problem that there's no jobs there, or the
jobs pay peanuts,

So commute somewhere you can find a good job. When you're not stuck in bumper
to bumper gridlock it sucks a lot less.

>so unless you banked a bunch of money while you were living in the high-CoL
area, you're not going to be able to afford one of those nice houses anyway.

This is pure BS. The people that live there afford the houses somehow.
Considering that mortgage lending is fairly standardized at the high end it
still shouldn't be any harder to afford a local house on a local salary, if it
were nobody could get that loan.

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gringoDan
This article in one sentence: Housing is too expensive and there are now nice
coffeeshops, bars, and restaurants in other cities across the country.

~~~
ijidak
Hahaha. This is a much easier read, and yet, almost equally informative.

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Mountain_Skies
Another factor is shrinking household size. A house that before gentrification
held a bunch of children, at least one parent, and often some grandparents or
members of the extended family now is occupied by DINKs, retirees, or singles.
Families with children of course still exist but as a smaller percentage of
city households and typically with fewer children. The 2020 Census should
yield some very interesting statistics on how much the average household in
cities has changed just in the past decade.

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InvisibleCities
I can’t really speak for NYC or LA, since I have never lived in either one for
any appreciable amount of time, but in Chicago, it’s because of vastly unequal
access to public transportation. Housing demand is skyrocketing in
neighborhoods near L train stations, while the population is dwindling on the
west and south sides of the city where train service is virtually non-
existent. Nobody wants to commute to work via two 45-minute bus rides, and
driving to the loop from those far-flung neighborhoods is cost-prohibitive for
all but the wealthiest people (not to mention that it won’t save you much
time, even if you can afford it).

~~~
monksy
West/South sides.

There is train access there. However, most people don't go because that's
where the dangerous areas are. Also, the train gets pretty agressive in those
areas.

> commute to work via two 45-minute bus rides,

That's pretty much what the north side of the city is districted for. It
sucks, but the CTA is having budget cuts and the areas don't have that demand,
and the politicians fail to understand quality infrastructure. Build a circle
line, and I can guarantee you that the city will expand a lot. (Right now
businesses/white-collar jobs are primarily locked into loop+west loop)

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bin0
Maybe it's because urban environments aren't really "nice". For all I hear
about the joys of urban living, as espoused by others, I haven't enjoyed it
much. Public transportation is crowded and smelly. Fat people take half of my
seat (not nice to say, but I'm not sure how else to put it). Things are small,
which for a taller guy like me, is pretty tough. As in, _every thing_ is tiny.
Living spaces, shops, streets. Streets often have trash strewn on them, and
don't smell particularly good. I have to keep one hand on my wallet.
Sometimes, hobos got aggressive. Not as much as an issue for me, but I'd hate
to be a 4'9" lady. Keeping pets is hard. Cooking food is hard. I didn't have
kids, but those I knew had a hard time with them. Things are very expensive.
It's loud. There's a lot of traffic. Some times (all winter and some times in
summer), it's bad weather for walking. I guess I shouldn't be complaining,
since I at least didn't see much in the way of human feces.

This is not to say there aren't up-sides. I like the food, and there are
interesting people. It's also much easier to find certain things; for
instance, a few major cities still have serious "maker shops" with tons of
electronic components. Smaller ones or sub-urban areas often can't accommodate
them, as they are in low enough demand that serious density is required.

Maybe this is just NYC. I didn't live there a really long time, and I guess I
might have gotten used to it? Still, I like sub-urban living and empty green
space. I can hardly blame people for moving out, if it's viable.

~~~
magduf
>Maybe this is just NYC.

Yeah, NYC isn't like the rest of the country. DC isn't nearly as bad in many
ways. Public transit here is newer and generally nicer, though they really
should run the trains more often and expand the system (this is a huge problem
with NYC's MTA: it hasn't been expanded or modernized and it's hitting a brick
wall). As for stuff being tiny, yeah, I saw that in NYC too: restaurant
bathrooms the size of phone booths, for instance. Not in DC, or in other
international cities I've been in even. There's hobos here, but I've never
seen them be too aggressive. It's not as loud: NYC is special that way,
because people are constantly honking their horns, and there's way too many
cars. Go across the river to NJ, and you'll _immediately_ notice that people
don't honk so much, it's something that's unique to NYC. There's maker shops
here too. And the streets aren't as dirty as in NYC. There's tons of people
here in DC who moved from NYC, I've found.

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gamblor956
Huge caveat: "among nonimmigrants."

The article is about white flight. LA and NYC's populations have grown over
the past 2 decades, and Chicago's population is roughly the same over the last
twenty years.

~~~
SaintGhurka
Where do you get that?

"Third, the black population of both New York and Los Angeles peaked in the
early 2000s and has since been in steady, and perhaps accelerating, decline."

And

"Chicago went from 4 percent black in 1920 to nearly 40 percent black by 1990.
But this century has seen a “Reverse Great Migration,” as the metro black
population is on pace to halve from its peak of 1.2 million by 2030."

~~~
gamblor956
I literally quoted the linked article.

The author has written a number of articles on white flight. He's just couched
it in different language for this publication, because the Atlantic is left-
leaning and the readership likely wouldn't appreciate that term.

Also, on a factual note: every single Google search and a review of Census
data and other counts of population show that LA and NYC increased in size
during the time period covered by the article, which contradicts the title and
summary of the article. The growth rate for both cities has shrunk because
there's not much more room for either of them to physically grow, and as the 2
largest metro areas in the US, large %-based growth is extremely difficult.

It's very easy for Bumpkin, Idaho to grow by 10% over a decade if it's only
starting from 50,000 people. That would be a rounding error in terms of NYC or
LA population statistics.

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cmoscoe
There are probably also some age-cohort demographics at play. As millennials
start to have families, the suburban (or small-urban) lifestyle becomes more
appealing. It's a big generation, so they pull the demographics around. Who
knows, they might even drag some of their Boomer parents who were living the
fun empty-nester-downtown-lifestyle back out of the big metros with them.

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Railsify
Because large cities smell, people urinate on the streets, the air quality is
very low and to add to those cons, you have to pay more to live there. Suburb
living is great, the air smells good, I can't hear my neighbors unless we have
a party. I suspect those that are leaving value saving for retirement over
renting an overpriced apartment in a chic neighborhood. Also there are no
murders in _most_ suburbs in any given year. If you live in NYC /Chicago
chances are you are within a mile of a murder at least once per year.
[https://maps.nyc.gov/crime/](https://maps.nyc.gov/crime/)

~~~
cozzyd
If suburb living is so desirable, why does it cost more to live in the city?

~~~
dilutedh2o
More jobs I guess?

~~~
mattkrause
This is especially true if you're part of a couple.

If one of us finds a job in New York, Boston, or Chicago, there's probably
something nearby for the other too.

GE had some interesting R&D jobs in Schenectady, but unless they hired both of
us, it would be a lot tricker for the other spouse to find something relevant.
US universities, which are often located in small towns, sometimes offer
"spousal hires", where they either create a new position for one person, or at
least give them some preference when hiring. I've never heard of a company
doing that, but it would certainly pique our interest (anybody need a neuro/ML
guy?)

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vondur
Well, those three cities have in thing in common, bad governments. This
Results in issues like huge homeless problems, greater taxes, and less
services from the taxes.

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bksenior
Because the first generation who was essentially denied the ability to
comfortably afford housing/living are now having families are having to look
elsewhere to commit and start a life.

There, I spared you a click.

~~~
colechristensen
It's not just millennials, really successful people are starting to move to
smaller metros so they can have big houses and less negatives.

There were a series of NY chefs that moved to Minneapolis to start restaurants
so they could have a yard, a dog, _and_ an interesting menu customers
appreciated.

~~~
dcolkitt
One underrated factor is that culture spreads so fast nowadays.

It used to be that New York or LA were way ahead of the curve in terms of
food, fashion, art, music, design, etc. People in the major cities were just
cooler. And it took a few years for the vanguard to diffuse, by which time the
big city folk had moved on to the wave.

It still kind of is. But much less. We're all reading the same subreddits,
blogs, and tweets. A hipster coffeeshop in Jacksonville pretty much looks,
sounds, feels and tastes the same as its counterpart in Brooklyn.

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dmode
Let me guess - cost of living ?

