Grow People, Not Acres
New Census Bureau figures show a continued flight from the areas once known as the industrial rust belt to sun belt cities. This process is leaving areas with more than adequate infrastructure and water supplies empty, and straining areas without adequate water supply or infrastructure.
Of course the name of the game in our local economies is grow or die. The system has it so whether your community is located alongside a great lake or in the desert, the goal is growth.
More than being wasteful, the environmental consequences of this process--spreading out the population and its relocation to previously undeveloped regions--are not inconsequential.
Still, it's hard to imagine what can be done. Local or state politics would never be able to stomach any federal program encouraging people to live in or move to under-occupied cities at the "expense" of rapidly developing ones.
What can be done?
First it is important for cities in rapidly growing areas--Southern California, Arizona and Nevada--to enact smart-growth measures and aim at denser, fixed-transit development. If you live in these areas, please, with much repetition remind legislators and local officials that building quality fixed-rail transit in a growing area is much more cost-effective now that it will be in a few years when land values double or triple.
The majority of these areas will enjoy growth and a healthy economy and will not try to limit further increases in population. Even without growth measures, the expanse of a city will eventually become so wide that densification will be inevitable (Los Angeles is an example of a fast-growing city that is becoming more dense). Having a plan to facilitate and encourage this process as well as allow the efficient movement of people will help limit the amount of necessary infrastructure and preserve resources.
On the other side of the spectrum, there is more that the old cities and states can do to attract and retain residents. Many of these cities have resorted to physical improvements in recent years, building sports arenas and waterfront parks. While important, these measures don't seem to get to the root of what growing cities have that depopulating ones don't. Certainly without any improvements, as far as cultural and civic attractions, even Buffalo or Cleveland could outdo Phoenix. Yet folks aren't heading to Cleveland.
A recent report in Governing magazine noted that seven states now allow illegal immigrants to go to state-sponsored colleges at in-state tuition rates. Many other states have legislation to allow the same pending. These states are not the ones with declining cities. Of course this kind of legislation is fueled by an immigrant population. It also seems that the growing cities listed by the Census have been fueled by an immigrant population as much as, if not more than, from people moving in from other states.
Gilbert, Ariz.; North Las Vegas; Henderson (also in Nevada's Clark County); Chandler, Ariz.; Irvine, Calif.; Port St. Lucie, Fla.; Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.; Fontana, Calif.; Peoria, Ariz.; and Cape Coral, Fla. Cities on the declining side--Cincinnati, Detroit, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh--are located far from current immigrant entryways opening doors to Asia and Latin America.
People may be moving South and West, but they are also coming in from the South and West. When immigrants were coming from the East, Philadelphia and St Louis saw dramatic population explosions long before places in the West measured any growth. As these cities became crowded, people moved to establish new cities in the West. (They may also move from West to East, as is seen by growing Asian and Latino populations in declining cities.)
Programs like the one allowing illegal immigrants to attend schools at in-state tuition rates (regardless of the obvious and obnoxious hypocrisies of U.S. immigration law) are essential to establish a similar movement from West to East and South to North.
The one thing that's always certain in this world is trends cannot be trends if they stay the same. Eventually there will be new trends. The trends are not only in population movement, but in legislative advancements. Whether we're talking about allowing immigrants to go to school, reforming taxes, or consolidating governments, we must take a hard look at the governmental environs of booming cities and states and make the same legislative adjustments that may be other cities attractive to new populations and fueling their growth.
Eric Miller is editor of The New Colonist.
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