All I can say is "Wow". I knew Detroit was in decline but 25% in 10 years (excluding the greater area)? That's just staggering.
For almost all of human history we've only had to deal with issues of growth. There are of course exceptions to this. Some cities that were massive are either small now or have ceased to exist. Some (like London) went through centuries of virtual depopulation before being reborn (between the Roman departure and the 10th-11th century).
But modern city depopulation seems to create some fairly big problems. Cities with significant depopulation (eg Detroit, Baltimore) are known for crime. Some say this causes the depopulation, which may well be true, but it also exacerbates it, as drug addicts and the like move into decaying and abandoned areas.
Going forward, this is going to be a significant problem we'll have to deal with, I believe. The reason I believe that is that it is my opinion that there are simply too many people on this planet. Ultimately it's unsustainable. Either we'll solve this by breeding less or nature will do it for us.
Either way, if this comes to pass, we'll need to figure out how to shrink urban centers effectively. That's going to be painful.
As for Detroit, it's certainly well off its peak in the 50s and 60s. It may be cheap (and thus, arguably, attractive to investors) but it's cheap for a reason. I'm sure Chechnya is cheap too.
>The reason I believe that is that it is my opinion that there are simply too many people on this planet. [...] Ultimately it's unsustainable. Either we'll solve this by breeding less or nature will do it for us.
If by breeding less you mean breeding less than the replacement level so that we can get to a "sustainable" size, I think you are wrong. Our sun puts out enough fusion power that, if we could capture a small chunk of it, each of us could personally use the current energy budge of the entire earth. Ultimately population growth at some fixed percentage is unsustainable (population growth at a fixed percentage grows exponentially, our light-cone polynomially), but I don't think earth's current population is.
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All I can say is "Wow". I knew Detroit was in decline but 25% in 10 years (excluding the greater area)? That's just staggering.
For almost all of human history we've only had to deal with issues of growth. There are of course exceptions to this. Some cities that were massive are either small now or have ceased to exist. Some (like London) went through centuries of virtual depopulation before being reborn (between the Roman departure and the 10th-11th century).
But modern city depopulation seems to create some fairly big problems. Cities with significant depopulation (eg Detroit, Baltimore) are known for crime. Some say this causes the depopulation, which may well be true, but it also exacerbates it, as drug addicts and the like move into decaying and abandoned areas.
Going forward, this is going to be a significant problem we'll have to deal with, I believe. The reason I believe that is that it is my opinion that there are simply too many people on this planet. Ultimately it's unsustainable. Either we'll solve this by breeding less or nature will do it for us.
Either way, if this comes to pass, we'll need to figure out how to shrink urban centers effectively. That's going to be painful.
As for Detroit, it's certainly well off its peak in the 50s and 60s. It may be cheap (and thus, arguably, attractive to investors) but it's cheap for a reason. I'm sure Chechnya is cheap too.
>The reason I believe that is that it is my opinion that there are simply too many people on this planet. [...] Ultimately it's unsustainable. Either we'll solve this by breeding less or nature will do it for us.
If by breeding less you mean breeding less than the replacement level so that we can get to a "sustainable" size, I think you are wrong. Our sun puts out enough fusion power that, if we could capture a small chunk of it, each of us could personally use the current energy budge of the entire earth. Ultimately population growth at some fixed percentage is unsustainable (population growth at a fixed percentage grows exponentially, our light-cone polynomially), but I don't think earth's current population is.