One of Missouri's Biggest Cities Takes a Hit

An article hit the interwebs early yesterday.

These 5 Cities Have Lost Half or More of Their Populations Since 1950

And sure, I figured Buffalo, New York might be on there.

And Pittsburgh.

And Cleveland.

And very likely Detroit, and maybe it at number one.

But check out what major American city was, in fact, in the number one spot on this list and has lost half or more than half of its population since 1950

What the report had to say--

1. St. Louis

> Decline from 1950 decade peak: -64.7%
> 1950 population: 856,796
> 2018 population: 302,838

With a population of 856,796, St. Louis was the eighth largest city in the country in 1950. The city’s population has steadily declined since then to just over 300,000 in 2018, ranking as only the 64th largest city in the United States. Like other cities with long-term population declines, adverse socioeconomic conditions are prevalent in parts of St. Louis. East St. Louis, for example, is far and away the most dangerous city in Illinois and one of the most dangerous cities in the United States. Also, one in four people living in St. Louis live in poverty, well above the national poverty rate of 14.6%.

While St. Louis may not be booming, certain aspects of the city do show signs of renewed prosperity. Relatively high immigration from Asia has helped offset some of the out-migration. The city’s sports teams, the Cardinals and the Blues, do very well, which can help support population and economic growth. And, plenty of universities and large companies still operate and thrive in the city.

That’s depressing.

And sure, it's not Kansas City but hey, it's Missouri. It still hurts.

Sam Brownback's Kansas

Did you see the latest results of Republican Governor of Kansas Sam Brownback's and his cohorts handiwork?  It's a real beauty:

Census shows more people leaving Kansas

A bit from the article:

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - New census figures show that more people have been moving out of Kansas than have been moving in recently.

From 2010 to 2013, Kansas lost 10,197 people because of outward migration, according to numbers released Thursday by the Census Bureau. The census also showed that Kansas gained 16,752 people from international migration over the last four years, but lost 26,949 to other states, which resulted in the net 10,197 loss.

From 2000 to 2009, Kansas had a net migration loss of 17,574, with most of it occurring from 2001 to 2005, when Kansas had a net loss of more than 27,000 people.

As if that isn't bad enough, it really does get worse:
As if Kansas was among the bottom 10 states in the number of people who moved in from other states compared with the number who moved out during the 12 months ending July 1, 2013. Kansas ended the year with a net loss of 12,557.
Now, sure, the people leaving very rural, nearly empty Kansas isn't completely, totally due to the results of the Republican work of slashing the taxes of the already-wealthy and heaping those taxes, instead, on the middle- and lower-classes but one thing's for sure, it surely isn't helping. It isn't helping the workers and working class people of the state, it hasn't helped businesses increase and/or expand in the state and it surely hasn't helped the budget of the state or of their schools.

Not only that but it's not expected to get any better any time soon, according to the Lawrence paper:

Study: Kansas' population to drop more | CJOnline.com

 

WICHITA — A decades-long decline in population is likely to continue in Kansas, particularly in the west of the state, and four counties could have fewer than 1,000 residents by 2040, according to a study by Wichita State University’s Center for Economic Development and Business Research.

 

All I can say is, Paul Davis can't become governor soon enough.

 

 



Uh-oh

Article out today:

US 'heartland' near historic shift from Midwest

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press – 1 hr 1 min ago

WASHINGTON – America's population center is edging away from the Midwest, pulled by Hispanic growth in the Southwest, according to census figures. The historic shift is changing the nation's politics and even the traditional notion of the country's heartland — long the symbol of mainstream American beliefs and culture.

The West is now home to the four fastest-growing states — Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Idaho — and has surpassed the Midwest in population, according to 2010 figures. California and Texas added to the southwestern population tilt, making up more than one-fourth of the nation's total gains since 2000.

When the Census Bureau announces a new mean center of population next month, geographers believe it will be placed in or around Texas County, Mo., southwest of the present location in Phelps County, Mo. That would put the center at the outer edge of the Midwest, on a path to leave the region by midcentury.

Just sayin'.

The sky isn't falling but it's changing.

Link to original post:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110308/ap_on_re_us/us_census_america_s_heartland

Can we even imagine China and it's size?

Really, we think of China as big and we kind of know and recognize that in the back of our minds but it becomes like imagining a billion--we just can't wrap our minds around it.

A friend of mine pointed this out last month to me.  China is beyond big.  An article today reminded me I needed to put this up here.

The article, in part:

China's skyscraper boom buoys global industry
By Joe McDonald, AP Business Writer

Sun Dec 5, 6:02 am ET
BEIJING – The 121-story Shanghai Tower is more than China's next record-setting building: It's an economic lifeline for the elite club of skyscraper builders.
Financial gloom has derailed plans for new towers in Chicago, Moscow, Dubai and other cities. But in China, work on the 2,074-foot (632-meter) Shanghai Tower, due to be completed in 2014, and dozens of other tall buildings is rushing ahead, powered by a buoyant economy and providing a steady stream of work to architects and engineers.
The U.S. high-rise market is "pretty much dead," said Dan Winey, a managing director for Gensler, the Shanghai Tower's San Francisco-based architects. "For us, China in the next 10 to 15 years is going to be a huge market."


China has six of the world's 15 tallest buildings — compared with three in the United States, the skyscraper's birthplace — and is constructing more at a furious pace, defying worries about a possible real estate boom and bust. It is on track to pass the U.S. as the country with the most buildings among the 100 tallest by a wide margin.
"There are cities in China that most Western people have never heard of that have bigger populations and more tall buildings than half the prominent cities in the U.S.," said Antony Wood, executive director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
China is leading a wave of skyscraper building in developing countries that is shifting the field's center of gravity away from the United States and Europe.

The shift is so drastic that North America's share of the 100 tallest buildings will fall from 80 percent in 1990 to just 18 percent by 2012, according to Wood. He said by then, 45 of the tallest will be in Asia, with 34 of those in China alone.
"So 34 percent of the 100 tallest buildings will be in a single country. That has only happened once before, and that was with the USA," he said.

Okay, and that's one thing and perhaps that shows where China and the US are headed (up/down, respectively?  Let's hope not but so it might seem) but it's in their population that you really get a sense of scope of the country and its people:
Ten cities in the US have a population of 1,000,000:

New York City 8.34m
Los Angeles 3.86m
Chicago 2.93m
Houston 2.31m
Phoenix 1.62m
Philadelphia 1.54m
San Antonio 1.42m
San Diego 1.35m
Dallas 1.33m
San Jose 1.01m

And that's easy enough to wrap one's mind around.

China, though?  Read on:

According the People's Daily Newspaper, China had more than 660 cities by the end of 2002, of which 10 had populations of more than 4 million each in the urban area; 23, between 2 and 4 million; 138, between 1 and 2 million; 279, between 500,000 and 1 million; 171, between 200,000 and 500,000; and 39, less than 200,000.


So as of 2002, China had 171 cities with population over 1 million.

By now, 2010, that number is likely even larger. 

That's pretty staggering.

Get the feeling we're dwarfed?



Enjoy your Sunday, y'all, regardless.
Links:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_china_skyscraper_empire
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_cities_in_the_US_have_a_population_over_1_million
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070504100112AAk3mPl

Note to Ed Ford and the City Council of Kansas City, Missouri

I don't think I'm being presumptuous here by pretending to, singlehandedly, speak for the citizens of the entire city but I think I'm safe in sending you this following note:

After the City Council's Planning and Zoning Committee passed a preliminary resolution this week this week in favor of the new Tomahawke Ridge housing community, North of the city, we, the citizens of Kansas City, whom you are supposed to represent, want you to know

WE DO NOT WANT THE TOMAHAWKE RIDGE DEVELOPMENT TO GO FORWARD.

And we don't want it for the following reasons, at minimum:

--It contributes to sprawl;

--It's too far from the city;

--It weakens the city's core further;

--It is 25 miles from the city's core;

--It will be difficult, at best, to give it fire protection;

--Our own Fire Department doesn't recommend it;

--The City Planning Department doesn't recommend it;

--The City can't even clear our streets now, with what we've got, let alone if we add 300+ more homes;

--The City can't even tend to our own street maintenance now, with what we've got, let alone by adding all these more miles of streets;

--The City can't even tend to our sewage system now, with what we've got, let alone by adding all this much more sewers, drains and pipes.

And that's just for starters.

We don't want it.

It isn't prudent, to use an old phrase from Saturday Night Live.

But we're serious.

And we mean it.


Thank you,

The citizens of Kansas City, Missouri

Who is the "war monger", anyway?

There is a fascinating new study of the former Soviet Union's population out right now, that shows its population is decreasing, and strongly, by the millions.

I heard of it this morning on NPR but after doing the most rudimentary search on the internet, I found--quickly and easily--that this has been going on for some time.

I'll get into some data in a second but what this means is, I think, that we can and should stop "fighting the last war"--the Cold War--and start thinking in new, intelligent, positive, current-moment ways. If we did and do, I think it's painfully obvious we can--and again, should--decrease our military budgets and spending.

After all, it's the military budgets of the former Soviet Union that was, in part, to blame for its collapse, if we'll remember.

That data:

"Russia's population has fallen by 6.6 million since 1993, despite the influx of millions of immigrants, according to a U.N. report released last year, and by 2025 the country could lose a further 11 million people."

"Recent Kremlin efforts to reward women for having more babies have caused a surge in the birth rate, the U.N. has said, but won't make much difference in the long term."

"Population levels in many developed countries have stagnated and are expected to fall by 2025, but Russia's population, currently around 142 million, has been in retreat since 1992. Russia's mortality rate is among the highest in the developed world, with average life expectancy for males at barely 60 years."

"For reasons that are not fully understood, Russians suffer very high levels of cardiovascular disease. But most experts blame the country's overall high death rate on alcohol. Drinking has been linked to everything from liver disease to Russia's high number of murders, suicides and fatal accidents."

Oh, and here's a beauty. Does the following sound familiar, ladies and gentlemen?

"The U.N. has also urged Russia to overhaul the health system to provide more efficient care..."

It surely sounds as though we have a lot more in common with these people--our former enemies--than we think.

The fact is, I think we could and should work with these people, yes, for the betterment of their country for peaceful, humanitarian goals and put little American flags on everything we do.

If we would tie ourselves in their minds to bettering their country, they would see us in a new, positive light.

The additional fact is, our country grossly overspends our GNP and GDP on military hardware.

It's obscene.

It's stupid.

The military industrial machine has taken over our government and our country and we need to wean ourselves off this section of our production.

The US, folks, spends $623 billion per year (as of FY08) on our military budget.

The entire rest of the world spends $500 billion.

Is this not insanity?

Who, exactly, is the "war monger" here?

The number 2 position is China, sure, and as of what must be the latest, most accurate data--FY04--they spent $65 billion.

$65 billion vs. our $623 billion.

You know what this means?

This means China is far more able to spend on infrastructure and on business and--here's a novel idea--their people than we are because they aren't filling warehouses with guns and bombs.

Who do you think will be better able to succeed, financially, in this scenario? The country stockpiling weapons or the nation bettering their country?

Let me suggest we get a heck of a lot more rational and merely cut the military budget in half--down to a mere $300 billion dollars--and put the balance into oh, I don't know, how about health care and schools and roads?

And while we're at it, could we look into finally get out of Germany and Italy, too?

Doesn't that seem to make a heck of a lot more sense than the insanity we're perpetrating now?

Link to stories:
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-03/2006-03-08-voa62.cfm
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/russiapop.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113490614
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm