Shrinking cities

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This article concerns the decline of city populations in some locations. Contrary to the familiar industrial image of "boomtowns", the size of some cities has declined, despite a growth in world population. Cities shrink when economic investment moves elsewhere in the world or when governmental policy creates a cycle of disinvestment. (See "redlining") Although seldom referred to, the decline of cities is a general pattern of our civilization. Surprisingly, the number of shrinking cities has increased faster in the last 50 years than the number of expanding ones.^{[citation needed]}

1 Global context
2 List of shrinking cities
- 2.1 United States
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Global context

The current population of the world is 6.5 billion people. Currently about 3 billion live in cities. The expected growth by 2030 in cities is expected to be 4.1 billion.^{[citation needed]}

In the last 50 years, about 370 cities with more than 100,000 residents have undergone population losses of more than 10%. More than 25 percent of the depopulating cities are in the United States, and most of those are on the East Coast.^{[citation needed]}