Posted on 08/26/2010 10:45:30 AM PDT by dragnet2
Most of America’s Ten Dead Cities were once major manufacturing hubs and others were important ports or financial services centers. The downfall of one city, New Orleans, began in the 1970s, but was accelerated by Hurricane Katrina.
Notably, the rise of inexpensive manufacturing in Japan destroyed the ability of the industrial cities on this list to effectively compete in the global marketplace. Foreign business activity and US government policy were two of the three major blows that caused the downfall of these cities. The third was the labor movement and its demands for higher compensation which ballooned the costs of manufacturing in many of these cities as well.
#1. Buffalo
#2. Flint
#3. Hartford
#4. Cleveland
#5. New Orleans
#6. Detroit
#7. Albany
#8. Atlantic City
#9. Allentown
#10. Galveston.
(Excerpt) Read more at 247wallst.com ...
Galveston, oh, Galveston.
“Have you ever seen the backup on I-45 after a nice weather weekend. You’d think the idiots that run metro could at least open the HOV lanes on Sunday night into Houston but noooo, let those cars sit next to it. Which begs the question if Galveston is a dead city, how come there is so much traffic to and from it?”
Well . . . . I live near I-45 where it crosses Clear Creek. When I drive back and forth from Galveston on election nights (I am an election judge and have to drop off the ballots) — typically at 10-11 pm on a Tuesday night, when it is pretty empty — the drive takes me about 20 minutes one way. When I drive to or from Galveston from that same point (NASA 1 or FM-518 any time on Saturday or Sunday (when the tourists are at Galveston) the trip takes me about 20 minutes one way. No difference.
Now from 518 to the 610 Loop, it is a different story. There are plenty of times when it is stop and cuss. But for some reason, traffic always clears by the time I reach NASA 1 if I am heading south, and doesn’t get slow until I get north of NASA 1.
Mind, I-45 is at least six lanes from 610 to Galveston — the whole way. Yet it never gets crowded once you are south of the north part of Galveston County.
I might be wrong, but it might just be possible that those crowds you are talking that choke I-45 on Sunday night might not be coming back from Galveston Island. They might be coming from Galveston and Clear Lake and Kemah. Based on what I have observed, I suspect that there are more folks getting on I-45 on or north of 518 than there are south of it. Certainly there is not enough traffic on I-45 to slow down traffic between Clear Creek and Galveston Island.
It’s the same with Detroit, Grosse Pointe is probably one of the best suburban towns in the entire country.
If you get the chance, go down there and check it out. They have done a very nice job of bring her back up. It’s cleaned up really nice.
I did my own analysis of these places.
1. None are in the West, which required some iniative to reach.
2. Population for most of the failing towns peaked at or near 1950, and is now about one half of the peak (for example Detroit was 1,850,000 in 1950 and is estimated at 911,000 today).
3. The US population has doubled since 1950, from about 151,000,000 to about 310,000,000. One might expect important cities’ population to also double.
4. The population of the US has shifted to the West and to the South, where opportunity was good.
5. Cities in the West have grown with (or faster than) the US population, such as Phoenix (from 107,000 in 1950 to 1,586,000 now), Houston (from 596,000 in 1950 to 2,258,000 now), San Antonio (from 408,000 in 1950 to 1,373,000 now), San Diego (from 334,000 in 1950 to 1,306,000 now), etc. for Dallas, Lost Angeles, San Jose, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Austin completing the other large cities.
(note: Some major city-metro areas are further down the list, because the principle city is joined by several medium towns to make the big metro area. Denver is an example.)
5. The people remaining behind in these failing, shrinking plces are predominently those who cannot or will not move, even when it would benefit them.
6. The people in the West/South were people (or descended from people) that exercized iniative to improve their lives.
7. Generally politics in the West and South were/are more conservative and conducive to economic growth, freedom, etc.
I was taught as a kid in the West that the West was not fully portrayed. Now in my 60s, my parents were correct.
The national news media is in NY and DC. But the people are in Houston and LA.
Sports Teams have shifted some, but not as much as the population. So Buffalo with 270,000 people has an NFL team, but San Jose with 965,000 does not.
When census redistricting occurs, seats will move West and South.
Not sure where you are ?? But you are right that there is a real opposition to drilling for natural gas here. Of course cap and tax would kill us ..our electric is Coal power because the cleaner, cheaper water power goes to NY city.
Natural gas has always been the cheaper means of heating (very important in Buffalo ) and cooking ...but with the current political climate that may not be true long.
Buffalo is a gem in the rough ...we have wonderful colleges and a university, great hospitals, and wonderful summer and fall weather.. and the people are terrific.. But that can be said of many other cities, I just happen to be hanging onto mine right now.
Many of these cities have problems that were simply written by history - things change.
And, either inherent and natural inability (too little to offer) or inabilities from a lack of coherent local business and political will, left the “dead” cities unable to “re-invent” themselves, in terms of what could either sustain (as it once was) or drive local economic development.
Corporations often have similar histories - things change drastically and the need for major revisions of the business plan arise; and the worst ones die while the best ones - like IBM - reinvent themselves and continue to thrive.
Some of it is natural (can’t do anything about it - time to move on) and some of it is lack of leadership.
I think Buffalo is one of those cities that has a lot of natural INABILITY to recover a lot of what it once was.
Without the canal systems joining the east coast and the mid-west through the Great Lakes, its likely Buffalo would never have become as large as it once was. And once that system was no longer paramount to interstate commerce, Buffalo began to decline - a more or less natural history of events.
Could Buffalo have reinvented some strategic, or at least useful importance for itself, equal to its economic past? Maybe; but in all the reports of the long decline of Buffalo that I have read, I have never heard anyone say they know what could have caused things to be better.
“Government” both state and federal have lavished all kinds of “economic development” ideas and funds on Buffalo for decades. Even if it is no longer shrinking, it simply may have reached it’s lowest sustainable limit and is no necessarily poised to “recover”.
I truly believe that unsentimental, objective research might show that if we can’t prevent the politicians from throwing taxpayer money at saving cities that can’t be saved, it would at least be better economics to get them to spend that money subsidizing internal migration from such places.
Yes, I know, the smart people already understood that and left, and keep leaving. And, I am not in favor of every tax-payer funded effort that is mounted for this issue. I’m only suggesting that if we prove ourselves unable to prevent the incumbent politicians from mounting their “economic” rescue plans, then at least let’s not waste money trying to “rescue” “dead” towns, let’s “rescue” the remainder of the citizens still stuck there and help them internally migrate to the economic prosperous areas of the country.
Still it would suck trying to haul thousands of containers through that traffic. There is a rail line that parallels 45 though. Thanks for being an election judge. Lord knows we need them.
Do you live in the area? I have relatives in Friendswood.
Yep. Sugar Land.
You?
“Still it would suck trying to haul thousands of containers through that traffic.”
AFAIK most containers (and cars) being shipped travel by rail to and from a port rather than by truck. The only exceptions would be those with an ultimate destination of less than 100 miles or 1-container shipments to small businesses. Long-haul rail shipment is orders of magnitude cheaper than roadway shipment. If you are a wholesaler or manufacturer in Dallas, getting 20-200 containers at a time, it costs less to put them on a train to Dallas and have your trucks take them to your warehouse from Dallas than to have 20-200 trucks pick them up on the coast and drive them to Dallas. (Now if you are a small software house in Dallas getting a single container of your packaged software made in China, then a trucking it from Houston or Galveston might make sense, but I am not sure.)
So if Galveston had bet heavily on containerization in the 1960s and become *the* container port of the Texas Gulf Coast, I don’t know if you would really have much more truck traffic on I-45 between Galveston and Houston. It mostly would have gone by rail. (Crossing Hwy 3 might be a bear though — with all those extra trains . . . )
I am not entirely in love with Texas’ solution to the problem that places like Hartford has in Connecticut.
But, Texas laws protect its biggest cities, like Dallas and Houston for instance, from “losing” its citizens to “suburbs”.
In order to protect “the core” from losing its base, the central city is empowered to annex, a village, or whole town, nearest it, into itself - and not because the area on the edge asked for it but because the core said it was time. There are standards and limits of course, but as the core expands by annexation then over time the limits are moving further out from the original core as well.
The one thing it does do is it prevents the “suburbs” from emptying the tax-base from the core.
I remember when I lived in a northern “suburb” of Houston - Spring Texas - in 1980-81, there was talk that not only would Spring become part of Houston someday, but, they predicted that someday The Woodlands (about 30 miles north of Houston) would someday enter Houston’s embrace as well.
Again, my libertarian and Conservative ideals do not leave me jumping for joy over how Texas handled this issue, and maybe I am wrong but maybe it is why Galveston is the only “dead” Texas town on the list.
Some great discussions of cause and effect, nuts and bolts on this thread.
Thanks for posting it dragnet2.
My pleasure!
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Don’t know if Galveton was run by ‘Rats, but it has been wilped out twice by hurricanes..latest, Ike in .08.
Wiped out by hurricanws
Bump for a later read!
Casinos are the cities way of taxing those who avoid most taxes the working people pay.
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