Why towns die

City teams will do their best to attend to any outages as soon as possible. It provided an affordable, regular, and scheduled public transport service between Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha and the Civic Centre station in the Cape Town central business district.

You have disabled JavaScript on your browser. Please enable it in order to use City online applications. It looks like your browser does not have JavaScript enabled. Today, it's around 3 percent or less. This is mostly due to changes in technology of a hundred different kinds: scientific advances have made farmland much more efficient, transportation technology and infrastructure have made it possible to keep food fresh longer and get it farther in that time, machines do the work of multiple people A lot of small farming towns in the Great Plains feature mostly-boarded-up downtowns and an average population age in the 50's or older.

Parts of the much drier High Plains fared even worse and completed the transition to full-on Ghost Town. Lots and lots of former factory towns in the Midwest, including most cities around the Great Lakes the "Rust Belt". Detroit , Cleveland , Milwaukee , and Pittsburgh are but a few cities whose populations today are half of what they were in the midth century if that.

Even those that have bounced back economically, like Pittsburgh and Milwaukee, still struggle to shed their former image. It's easier to list the exceptions cities that have never suffered rather than those that fit: Chicago , despite losing a quarter of its population since its historic peak, has held up due to sheer size third largest city in the USA and a relatively diversified economy.

Toronto from being the centre of Canadian finance and media with a well-timed boost in The '70s from Quebec's strict language laws, which led to an influx of anglophones and businesses from Montreal. Columbus, Ohio , since its economy is heavily tied to The Ohio State University the largest single college campus in the US and the state government rather than any specific industry that would be at the mercy of economic trends.

The result was the middle class who had fled the city to the fringes of the county in the post-war years were again part of the city and this led to more revenue and a revitalization of the downtown area which occurred decades before many other cities followed suit.

Many fishing communities in Atlantic Canada were devastated with the collapse and shut down of the cod fishery. In the decades since, few have been able to come anywhere close to recovering as fish stocks continue to struggle. The Detroit area is an incredible example of suburbs that are completely independent of the city they surround.

Louis , Missouri used to be this before the city created a massive lower-city cleaning program where they cleaned up and cleared out the lower city. Gary, Indiana is a few steps away from being a straight-up Ghost Town —either that, or Indiana's own mini-Detroit.

Either way, not exactly an ideal place. Upstate New York , in addition to the usual Rust Belt problems, also had to deal with the loss of the Erie Canal as a viable shipping route after the St.

Lawrence Seaway made it obsolete. Rochester was dealt a particularly massive blow around the Turn of the Millennium because its economy was heavily dependent on Kodak , which was lethally slow to adjust to the digital photography revolution. Thankfully, it bounced back due to the tech industry and its thriving arts scene, and just in time, as Kodak filed for bankruptcy shortly after the renaissance.

Albany, Ithaca, and to a lesser extent Syracuse also survived due to their universities and, in Albany's case, the state government. Even Buffalo, which managed to avoid total decrepitude, still has a lot of examples of post-industrial rot scattered throughout the city, its population having fallen by over half. Some managed to bounce back Manchester, Nashua, and Worcester being among the better examples , while others Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, Lawrence, Lowell, Brockton, Lynn, Fitchburg, and Fall River, all in MA, and Pawtucket and Woonsocket, both in RI never recovered and are nowadays known for being places that one should avoid at all cost.

Like the above-mentioned example of Detroit, however, the suburbs are doing very well in spite of the cities that they service; the Merrimack Valley region does very well despite being home to Lawrence, Lowell, and Haverhill all of which are known for being highly decrepit and crime-ridden because of its ties to Manchester and Boston, while the same is also true for Agawam, Longmeadow, and the other suburbs of Springfield and Hartford, both of which are among the poorest and most dangerous cities in the entire Northeast.

While able to transition from textile mills to steelworking, avoiding that same early 20th century decline, eventually the same faults that would come to plague the rest of the Rust Belt would hit the Berkshires as well. This is noticeable mostly in the northern half of the county and Pittsfield, where such industry was concentrated— also because the southern half of the county benefits from the attention of New Yorkers with summer homes around Great Barrington.

It isn't necessarily as severe as other examples, though. It also doesn't hurt to have one of the wealthiest and most well-regarded colleges in the nation only a few minutes away. This, however, comes with the caveat of gentrification and a growing divide between new neighbors and pre-existing working class families.

Other communitise like county capital Pittsfield aren't nearly as lucky, and many other parts of the already sparsely populated county have been hit rather hard by the Opioid Crisis. It's a weird situation. Although, Lowell isn't as bad off as a lot of them, due to Tourism brought in by Lowell National Historic Park , which preserves the history of Manufacturing in Lowell and the rest of New England, and being the home of one of the state's major Universities, UMass Lowell. It only starts to get rough as you head away from the highway and towards Lawrence.

The Niagara Region in Ontario, much like upstate New York across the river, has been in slow decline since the s. There used to be much manufacturing along the Niagara River and Welland Canal, but cheaper products from elsewhere have caused all but a couple of the factories to go bust.

The area now mostly runs on the casinos, wineries, and agriculture. Towns that base their existence on exploiting natural resources often become these when the resource runs out or becomes obsolete. Examples would be the ghost towns in the Western United States, mining towns in Appalachia, and more mining towns in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Some towns that are forcefully evacuated because their national resource makes them toxic. The Superfund project spent about two decades working to clean up the town and now certain pockets of it are livable, though generations of its residents will still succumb to mesothelioma.

Odessa, Texas' economy is directly tied to the dwindling reserves of oil in the area. Not good. Ditto for its Friday Night Lights stand-in, Dillon. Many of the suburbs in the American "Sun Belt" the southern third of the country, running from Southern California to the Carolinas and Florida went from Boom Towns to Dying Towns virtually overnight as a result of the economic collapse.

For decades, Americans had been choosing to buy houses somewhere that would be nice, warm, cheap, and sunny to live. Unfortunately, this led to a housing bubble in places that didn't actually have anything else supporting their economic base.

Cities like Phoenix, Arizona and Fort Myers, Florida, which were largely nothing but suburbs, have been hit especially hard. Las Vegas survived due to its massive casino-based tourist industry, but it is now surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of pre-built tract houses in the middle of the desert that will probably never sell. They were once touted as the affordable alternative to expensive housing in Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego. The combination of rising gasoline prices California's strict emissions standards meant the state already had the highest gas prices in the country, even before prices spiked in the mids , falling housing prices, and the lack of high-paying local employment created a perfect storm for the region, which now suffers from some of the highest crime and unemployment rates in the nation.

One California example, Hinkley , stands out as the location of the tainted water scandal chronicled in Erin Brokovich. The effect on the local economy is unmistakable. In Seattle , during the Boeing Bust of The '70s , there was a billboard near the airport that read "Will the last person leaving Seattle - turn out the lights".

It was out of this milieu that grunge emerged. The city turned itself around pretty quickly , however Starbucks, Seattle's pride and joy, made coffee a luxury simply by tripling the price , the transition largely completed in The '90s.

Harvey, Illinois. The last portion of Dixie Square Mall was torn down in May Whether the redevelopment that the city is hoping for actually happens remains to be seen.

Sidney, Nebraska. Once a growing city that boasted the headquarters of Cabela's. Once Cabela's was bought out by Bass Pro, a town of 7, people lost 2, jobs. You do the math. San Antonio, Texas was a dying town for most of the first half of the 20th century.

Then it was announced the World's Fair was going to be held there, leading to a surge in development. The Riverwalk came into being, new downtown hotels were built, a convention center sprung up, downtown was transformed from a sleepy hub of shantytowns to a lively center of activity, etc. Schefferville, Quebec , whose economy was based on asbestos mining. When its ore mining stopped in , the population dropped from over to just a few hundred today.

The city temporarily lost its legal incorporation status between and Many smaller towns in the Pittsburgh area have been severely crippled by the loss of the steel industry in the s, many of which are along the Ohio and Beaver Rivers. Some of these include towns such as Aliquippa, Ambridge, Beaver Falls, New Brighton, Midland, Monaca though perhaps not as much , and Freedom- and that's just on the western side of the city.

Notable exceptions upon the river include Beaver the seat of Beaver County , Sewickley lot of old money here , and Moon the airport. Since , Aliquippa experienced a However, the area may see some revitalization with a Royal Dutch Shell cracker plant showing up in nearby Shippingport in the next year or two.

A classic example is Sharon, PA, which was made up almost entirely of manufacturing facilities, including Sharon Steel, est.

After the Sharpsville Dam was built in the s to control flooding, thus cutting off trade by way of the rivers, Sharon relied on their connection to I to transport goods as well as rail lines that ran by select factories. Steel manufacturing declined due to overseas competition, and manufacturing in general declined until the recent economic recession practically crippled the town. Sharon Steel was closed in , and nearly all physical remnants were removed by The vacation destination Salton City, California, suffered greatly when the Salton Sea's slow evaporation and increasing salinity killed its ecosystem and destroyed its tourism industry.

The city is full of half-completed houses, abandoned buildings, vacant lots, and roads to nowhere. However, the dirt-cheap land eventually created a housing boom in the area in reaction to California's skyrocketing real estate prices.

Its population was triple that of 10 years previous. Cars is actually Truth in Television to a point. Many towns that had historically banked on the steady traffic from Route 66 became this or even died completely, largely due to the emergence of the interstate highway system combined with other socioeconomic factors.

Stories like Radiator Springs were and still are tragically common. A non-industrial example is Kalaupapa, Hawaii, which was founded in as a leper colony.

By , Hansen's disease—aka leprosy—was treatable and better understood, so the state ended its forced exile and moved to close the colony. However, many former patients wished to stay since they knew their disfigurements would make returning to normal society all but impossible.

As a result, the state closed Kalaupapa to new arrivals but has allowed the former patients to live there for the rest of their lives. As of the census, less than a dozen of the original patients remain the rest of the town's 88 residents are state and national park employees.

When the last of the now-elderly patients moves or passes away, the state plans on turning the colony into a memorial park. Geographers and Sociologists have studied many American and Canadian towns which have died or shrunk considerably over the past several decades and determined that one by one the following will happen, usually in this order: A major employer closes, major retailers close, the town government dissolves or consolidates with the county, the school closes, the Post Office closes.

Other Many smaller towns on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia were originally founded as Boomtowns for rubber plantations and tin mines during the late 19th and early 20th century; this dependence on single sources of income became their undoing when the price of rubber and, ultimately, tin finally crashed for good, decimating their bread and butter and leading many of its younger talents flocking for greener pastures in larger towns or cities or abroad.

The vast majority who chose to stay and contribute to whatever was left of the town's economy are now somethings or older, which is very telling of the future of these towns. State capitals do not fare better either. The Kuala Lumpur-centric nature of the country's economy after independence naturally sent new job seekers gravitating to the national capital and its surrounding satellite towns, or alternately the state capitals of Penang and Johor or Singapore.

The scarcity of free land for new development within old town centres would also prompt developers to construct new suburban towns on the outskirts, taking with it long-time townies who simply favour more peace and quiet.

It's thus unsurprising to find capitals for lesser-known states suffering from acute urban decay and desolation, even during festive seasons, when people are supposed to be returning to their hometowns. This is an enormous problem in Russia, where there are dozens, if not hundreds , of so-called "single-factory towns".

Many of them were built during the mass industrialization in the s and had almost the entire adult population working on some sort of heavy machinery factory or power plant. When the USSR bit the dust, many of the factories were shut down or forcibly bankrupted, leaving entire cities unemployed and rapidly depopulating.

A typical example is Yurievets, Ivanovo Oblast. Once home to several factories, currently all are in ruins or disassembled.

The population is half of what it once was and below the official minimum to qualify as a town, and survives on subsistence farming and working shifts in neighboring cities. You can often find abandoned houses if you wander in the streets.

Former East Germany is infamous for this. Since German reunification, there has been a constant exodus of people from rural areas, small towns, and fairly large cities to move towards the area that was former West Germany.

These emigrants are also disproportionately young and women. High rates of unemployment and crime, low salaries, and rising amounts of neo-Nazi activity are all common reasons why people emigrate.

It also doesn't help that most of the national economic activity, and large demand for skilled workers, is concentrated along the western parts of the country.

Stratford-upon-Avon District Council said tests had confirmed a strain of avian flu in dead birds collected from the town. Mr Bennis, the former mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon, said: "It is absolutely brutal.

It comes after a case of the disease discovered on Sunday led to a cull of all turkeys and chickens at a poultry unit near Alcester, Warwickshire. A UK-wide bird flu prevention zone has also come into force, meaning bird keepers need to follow strict biosecurity measures to help protect their flocks.

Bird flu has also been confirmed at a wild bird rescue centre in Worcestershire , at an animal sanctuary near Frinton-on-Sea in Essex and in Chirk, near Wrexham. Barcelona Provincial Council: this is how a smart region works. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole: cities become smarter by forming smart regions. Metropolitan governance: extending municipal governments as a response to new urban challenges. How to go from being a town to a Smart Town.

The G20 creates the Global Smart Cities Alliance to establish universal norms and guidelines for the implementation of technology. Citizens at the heart of smart cities. Open government and citizen participation: a journey through history - Infographic. How and why do cities die? Digital natives, technological illiterates? Citizens policing our streets: is it lawful to report the inappropriate use of cities?

Smart cities that failed along the way. Can technology foster democracy? Open data: how can they improve citizen engagement and the economy? Cities are for people: towards a new conception of public spaces. Electronic voting, a reality that has little to do with virtual reality.

Welcome to the Smart City Live! How cities are using collective intelligence to fight the coronavirus. What makes a city attractive to talent? Imec: Open digital twin framework. Arca: Wave control for better health. Smart Buildings: Enabling reliability and resilience for a better future. DMAP: Unlocking the power of transportation analytics.

These were the urban utopias that preceded us - Infographic.