Stagnation: cities that could become the next Detroit

[WISFreeways]

Inspired by the thread's converse (aka under the radar cities) as well as a corresponding topic in the CityData forums, which city in the US, in your opinion, has the highest chance of decaying in the near future like Detroit did, and why?

[hotdogPi]

My first thought was Chicago, due to the high crime rate, but then I looked at the population numbers, and the population is not decreasing from 2010 to now.

[Max Rockatansky]

There won't likely be another Detroit level decline of a city.  Most modern cities have far more diverse industries and economic bases compared to what the Mid-West had.  Detroit specifically was tied to the American Auto Industry and the fact that it had almost the entire US Market share, essentially it had all the eggs in one basket.  Cities like Cleveland, Pittsburg, Buffalo, Gary, in addition to many other smaller Mid-West cities had similar declines in the second half of the 20th century. 

Right now I'd say New Orleans is the most likely to eventually decline due to a heavily weighted industrial economy and the fact that it is located on terrain that will become increasingly difficult to manage with rising sea levels.  Hurricane Katrina really did a number on that city and drove the population down significantly.

[jeffandnicole]

Inspired by the thread's converse (aka under the radar cities) as well as a corresponding topic in the CityData forums, which city in the US, in your opinion, has the highest chance of decaying in the near future like Detroit did, and why?

In the comments sections within newspapers, nearly every pessimist says that their city will become the next Detroit.  Especially over things that had nothing to do with Detroit.

[Desert Man]

I can name 5 cities similar to Detroit or headed to become a ruin, they are: 1. Camden NJ, 2. East St Louis MO, 3. Gary IN, 4. New Orleans LA (rising sea level) and 5. Welch WV - the post-coal economy nearly killed that place. For CA, the 5 cities which has the negativity but not total decline like Detroit are 1. El Centro (on the Mexican border), 2. Oakland, 3. San Bernardino, 4. Stockton and 5. Yuba City - adjacent is Marysville in Yuba county. I'm not too far from the state's worst city to live: Desert Hot Springs (LOL). 

[hotdogPi]

I can name 5 cities similar to Detroit or headed to become a ruin, they are: 1. Camden NJ, 2. East St Louis MO, 3. Gary IN, 4. New Orleans LA (rising sea level) and 5. Welch WV - the post-coal economy nearly killed that place. For CA, the 5 cities which has the negativity but not total decline like Detroit are 1. El Centro (on the Mexican border), 2. Oakland, 3. San Bernardino, 4. Stockton and 5. Yuba City - adjacent is Marysville in Yuba county. I'm not too far from the state's worst city to live: Desert Hot Springs (LOL).

There seems to be a trend with your first three. Camden, NJ is a suburb of Philadelphia, PA. East St. Louis, IL (not MO) is a suburb of St. Louis, MO. Gary, IN is a suburb of Chicago, IL. All three of these cities are suburbs of a city in a different state. Now I'm wondering if state borders matter.

However, I wouldn't say that a suburb of a larger city would become the next Detroit, especially if the main city is doing fine.

[mgk920]

I can name 5 cities similar to Detroit or headed to become a ruin, they are: 1. Camden NJ, 2. East St Louis MO, 3. Gary IN, 4. New Orleans LA (rising sea level) and 5. Welch WV - the post-coal economy nearly killed that place. For CA, the 5 cities which has the negativity but not total decline like Detroit are 1. El Centro (on the Mexican border), 2. Oakland, 3. San Bernardino, 4. Stockton and 5. Yuba City - adjacent is Marysville in Yuba county. I'm not too far from the state's worst city to live: Desert Hot Springs (LOL).

There seems to be a trend with your first three. Camden, NJ is a suburb of Philadelphia, PA. East St. Louis, IL (not MO) is a suburb of St. Louis, MO. Gary, IN is a suburb of Chicago, IL. All three of these cities are suburbs of a city in a different state. Now I'm wondering if state borders matter.

However, I wouldn't say that a suburb of a larger city would become the next Detroit, especially if the main city is doing fine.

IMHO, Detroit has already hit bottom and is in the beginning stages of a major rebound.  One point that was brought up a few months ago in the TV show 'This Old House', when they focused on two properties in Detroit, is that unlike most other major cities, the vast, vast majority of the properties in Detroit were developed as low-density detached single-family houses, as opposed to other places that were developed with a much higher percentage of the units being in multi-family buildings.  When the union autoworker jobs declined (along with many other of the worst things that the mid-20th century foisted on the USA's cities that all hit Detroit in unison), demand for single-family residential in the city tanked.

The other places listed also have already had their declines.

As for places that have not yet had their 'declines', I have no insight on specific places, but IMHO, I can easily see that happening in many 'Sun Belt' cities as their respective cachets fade.

Mike

[bandit957]

Twenty years ago, Cincinnati was headed that way, but big cities like that are growing again.

Some mid-sized cities like Erie PA might decay, or maybe even some of the small cities near Cincinnati.

[bandit957]

In the comments sections within newspapers, nearly every pessimist says that their city will become the next Detroit.  Especially over things that had nothing to do with Detroit.

A lot of the people saying that are paid trolls.

[bandit957]

Also, strong labor unions are more effective in preventing such a decline.

[SP Cook]

- Welch, with a max population of 6.6K in a county with a max populartion of 100K was hardly ever a "city" in the sense of the other major cities being discussed. 

- I prefer to look at entire metro areas as opposed to cities.  A discussion of East St. Louis is really a part of a discussion of St. Louis.

- Leaving aside discussion about the theory of global warming, the Ports of New Orleans, South Louisiana, Plaquemines, and Baton Rouge, together with the Louisiana Off-shore Oil Port, are taken together, the largest port in the world.  That will never change.  It is the transportation center of North America.

- So what you need to look at are places with things similar to what happened to Detroit.   Single industy.  Hostile workforce.  Unpleasant place to live even when prosperous (weather, crime, demographics, schools, infastructure, costs, etc.)   Single party government whose power base are those that refuse to work.  Pittsburgh (an inverse mirror of Detroit, with the city doing OK, but the suburbs and hinterland bombed out) is a good candidate, as is Cleveland. 

[bing101]

I can name 5 cities similar to Detroit or headed to become a ruin, they are: 1. Camden NJ, 2. East St Louis MO, 3. Gary IN, 4. New Orleans LA (rising sea level) and 5. Welch WV - the post-coal economy nearly killed that place. For CA, the 5 cities which has the negativity but not total decline like Detroit are 1. El Centro (on the Mexican border), 2. Oakland, 3. San Bernardino, 4. Stockton and 5. Yuba City - adjacent is Marysville in Yuba county. I'm not too far from the state's worst city to live: Desert Hot Springs (LOL).

Wait I though Oakland would be like an alternate place economically for companies though due to the expensive costs in San Francisco and San Jose. I would have guess Vallejo at first to go on the decline due to the bankruptcy in 2008 though.

[Brandon]

My first thought was Chicago, due to the high crime rate, but then I looked at the population numbers, and the population is not decreasing from 2010 to now.

The only parts of Chicago (city proper) growing are the areas around the Loop (aka "Daleyland") and some of the northwest neighborhoods.  The south and west sides have good sections of urban prairie.  And yes, the population is starting to decrease again based on the latest estimates.  Factor in the pension issues, the city government being in full-blown denial of those issues, the increase in shootings (even in "Daleyland"), and the public school issues (again, the pensions), you have a recipe for a big problem.

[ET21]

Chicago is still in danger considering the status of the city and state financial woes, Gary IN is a TBA as they're about to do a major upgrade to their airport. I say a third would be New Orleans

[US 89]

St. Louis. There were tons of abandoned warehouses and factories when I was there last, and they had tons of graffiti all over them. Population is shrinking as well.

[Stephane Dumas]

Chicago is still in danger considering the status of the city and state financial woes, Gary IN is a TBA as they're about to do a major upgrade to their airport. I say a third would be New Orleans

And Chicago is where the remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson's Death Wish is set. The remake will star Bruce Willis and seeing how Chicago is going. That movie might be a big wake-up call.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1137450/

[jp the roadgeek]

Hartford could certainly be on the list.  City almost bankrupt, property taxes high, companies (and their workers) moving out because of high cost to do business in the state meaning much of the property is abandoned, too much spending (took a year and a half to build a new ballpark), and much of the city's population is on the dole from the system.  The city is trying to look for help from surrounding towns, and is hell bent on getting the state to force them to pay for the sins of the city. 

[inkyatari]

The city is trying to look for help from surrounding towns, and is hell bent on getting the state to force them to pay for the sins of the city.

Sounds like Illinois currently

[jeffandnicole]

I can name 5 cities similar to Detroit or headed to become a ruin, they are: 1. Camden NJ,

Detroit was really the next Camden.

Camden went down in flames 40 years ago. Their rebound has consisted of the USS New Jersey, an indoor/outdoor musical entertainment center (now known as the BB&T Pavilion), an aquarium, and a minor league ballpark.  In 2000 prior to a national convention in Philly, they made driving thru Camden on US 30 (Admiral Wilson Blvd) more pleasant by knocking down the abandoned buildings and X-rated places and planted grass.  17 years later, that still registers as one of the recent significant efforts to improve Camden!

[kalvado]

The city is trying to look for help from surrounding towns, and is hell bent on getting the state to force them to pay for the sins of the city.

Sounds like Illinois currently

Lots of cities are in a same boat - area is not doing good, and inner city is doing much worse since urban model doesn't really work; those who can move to suburb - do move to suburb; and things become even worse. Would be fixable if there were money in the system and surrounding economy was better...
But for now I suspect we need to develop a way a way to retire cities in controlled manner - as opposed to Detroit decay.
Trump was highly criticize over here for saying people from NY should move where jobs are,  and leave homes behind. But there is a grain of truth in that...

[Brandon]

The city is trying to look for help from surrounding towns, and is hell bent on getting the state to force them to pay for the sins of the city.

Sounds like Illinois currently

Exactly.  There is no way in hell that we should be paying for the Chicago Teachers' Pension using education funds that were meant for the rest of the state.  The other pensions in this state should model themselves after the only solvent one, the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund (IMRF) which is 95% funded, and which is funded through both municipal/county founds and employee contributions.  The Chicago Teachers' Pension used a shell game where the employees were supposed to pick up 9% of their pension as withholding in their paychecks.  The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) opted instead to allow them to contribute only 2% while the CPS picked up the other 7%.  This made quite a mess of things later on.

[Road Hog]

I could see Houston getting hit hard if and when renewable energy takes off and/or there is a major scientific breakthrough in fusion energy. The city is much more dependent on oil than DFW is.

[Desert Man]

Desert Hot Springs is now CA's worst city - 10 miles north of Palm Springs, the city nick-named "DHS" makes poorer Coachella and my hometown Indio look like paradise, LOL. At the 100-mile arc from Downtown L.A., the state dumped convict felons in lower-priced housing tracts in a desolate economy. Stretching from the Sierra Nevadas (Bakersfield metro area) to Anza-Borrego (San Diego metro area), the 100-mile arc has the state's most terrible cities like Adelanto, Barstow and California City, all in rural desert locations.

[sparker]

Many of the cities mentioned in the previous posts:  Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Buffalo, etc. -- have already experienced huge declines; most coming 1960-1990, when there was a concurrency between flight to the suburbs and loss of major industry.  Most of those cities are now at a "plateau" state; it seems like most of those now have a population of around 300K, give or take.  That seems to be a sustainable population for what industry is left as well as the localized service base; the areas have adapted to a lower level of economic activity and have adjusted their outlooks to match. 

That being said, some will likely do better than others; the Cincinnati-Dayton corridor has become one of the major consumer-product distribution hubs in the eastern U.S.; while such may not translate into revitalization of the "anchor" cities, it does portend reasonably well for the region as a whole -- at least those older cities are less likely to experience any major decline.  Medium-size cities with nationally-recognized universities -- and a thriving small-business base (e.g., Lexington, KY) are relatively immune from precipitous declines, even if the prospect of a sudden "boom" is dampened by the region's mode of continuity.  It's the isolated city lacking reasonable proximity to others of its type displaying the effects of years of neglect or complacency (sometimes due to the presence of a thriving -- or at least sustaining -- single commercial activity).  A recent example is Erie, PA; the GE locomotive plant there -- the largest in the country, is shutting down; a downsized replacement will be built near Fort Worth, TX., a city that, to say the least, is continually growing.  This will likely be a huge blow to Erie, long associated with General Electric; this was the last major company facility remaining in the city.  Currently a bit over 100K, IMO the population will drop at least 30% by 2025 (some workers and their families will, of course, simply relocate to Texas).  But that's the sort of situation facing any singular and limited-function metro area; these had little impetus for adapting to general change but instead carried on, even with marginal declines hard to detect except over significant time periods. 

Contributing factors in this?:  too many to list in a post like this one -- and most of which will precipitate politicized responses.  Let's just say that it's likely any further metro-area stagnation will focus on locations with the characteristics mentioned above.  Areas like the Cincinnati-Dayton corridor got lucky -- there were enough regional amenities -- coupled with the connectivity part & parcel of the "anchor" centers -- to render the area attractive for both location of distribution facilities as well as a reasonably attractive place for potential employees to relocate.  Other areas not featuring such factors will likely not fare terribly well if and when downturns (or corporate decisions such as with GE and Erie) occur. 

[cl94]

Buffalo's metro holding relatively steady at 1.2 million can be linked to the University, hospitals and tourism. Niagara Falls being one of the world's largest tourist attractions keeps the hospitality industry going. UB is relatively-high ranked and pumps a ton of money and jobs into the local economy. Roswell Park Cancer Institute (just north of downtown) is one of the country's top cancer hospitals. That being said, Upstate New York as a whole is shrinking, with only the Albany area seeing any growth.

Fun historical factoid: Roswell Park was the only doctor remotely close to Buffalo who was thought to have been able to save McKinley's life after he was shot, but he was in Niagara Falls performing a surgery and refused to leave the patient in the middle of the procedure, famously saying "don't you see, I can't leave. I am in the middle of a case even if it were for the President of the United States?"