How bad is it?
You know it’s bad when Forbes has an article “America’s Fastest Dying Cities”.
How does Forbes define a dying city?
A dying city faces ” fleeing populations, painful waves of unemployment and barely growing economies.”
Where’s it worst? Ohio, according to our analysis, which racked up four of the 10 cities on our list: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland. The runner-up is Michigan, with two cities–Detroit and Flint–making the ranking.
The article continues …
So far this decade, 115,000 people have left Cleveland, for other climes. Smaller changes in other regions can be just as painful. Nearly 30,000 people have left Youngstown, Ohio, and they aren’t being replaced by either new babies or new immigrants.
The article does not say how these dying cities can be revived.
I am sure each of these cities has unique problems so there is no universal cure for their ailments. If there is no universal cure then solutions must come from within each individual city. Real local leadership is needed.
What I fear is these cities will wait for ”the cure” to come from Washington.
They will be waiting a long time if they do.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 5:07 am and is filed under Intergovernmental Relations 101, Local Politics 101. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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August 18th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Jobs are created and sustained when entrepreneurs take the risk to chase a dream, create a product or service that others crave, and then achieve enough profit to hire people to grow the business.
Cities “die” when they don’t encourage and support entrepreneurial pursuits among their citizens. When cities stop looking at businesses as a means for greater “revenue,” and start championing profit for local businesses, it’s a win-win.
It’s no surprise that Michigan is on the list.
“You don’t have to ask why we are expanding outside of Michigan,” said Boyne USA’s Steve Kircher. “It’s a terrible business climate right now, and our state government is not helping the situation.”
http://industryreport.mountainnews.com/2007/11/michigan_business_climate_terr.shtml
I could find example after example. This is just one.