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Half of America’s Cities Are Depopulating. We Could Be Headed for a Ghost Town Era. (www.popularmechanics.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/science@lemmy.world
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Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

  • By studying population trends and forecasting models, researchers have come to believe that nearly 15,000 U.S. cities will face noticeable depopulation by 2100.
  • Populated areas of the cities in question could experience a decline of up to 44 percent.
  • Projections call for the biggest drops in city populations to occur in the Northeast and Midwest.
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[–] 0 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

Wouldn't more population within walking distance cause business rents to go up because of the promise of more business? That seems to be what's happening, and I can't see how it could be changed by "doing it right" unless they imposed rent controls. Talking about West Seattle in particular, more apartments have been built in the last 10 years than since I moved here 38 years ago.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I would expect more nearby residents makes the business rents go up, (more demand) and more nearby commercial space makes the business rents go down, (more supply) so ideally there would be some kind of reasonable balance between these things.

    What we’re actually seeing is skyrocketing demand and skyrocketing rents for just every kind of real estate so clearly this is not happening.

    Please don’t mistake me for somebody with deep knowledge of the subject; I’m just a loudmouth on the internet.

    What I’m arguing against is the idea that densification makes business unaffordable and we’d all have more interesting restaurants nearby if we just made everyone keep buying their own single family home with a yard. Even I can tell that that’s an asinine position.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Well, whatever happened to make business rents skyrocket here, it happened at exactly the same time as the big density push. Could have been some other factor since this apparently defies the physics of density, but it happened.

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