“The people who came here never intended to stay”
The anti-localism of American urbanism summed up in a paragraph: “The interesting thing about this demographic rocket ride, with an ascent and descent perhaps more rapid than that of any other U.S. city, is that it suggests a kind of one-off urbanism inherent to this place, certainly, and perhaps to American city-making generally. The city — this city — was never meant to be like other cities, especially European cities, with a population achieving a certain size and density and then remaining there, for generations; Detroit was always on the way to becoming something else, with a population that no sooner peaked than it began immediately to shrink. The riot of 1967 was still almost two decades off when this ex-migration began, so that wasn’t the reason. Not that there’s a single or a simple explanation. But one thing is clear. The people who came here never intended to stay.”
The US has always been a place where people move around a lot as opposed to Europe. A lot of it has to do with seeing land as capital and not a place to put down roots. I wrote more about it here:
http://www.ordinary-gentlemen.com/2009/10/new-concepts-in-home-ownership/
We are a transient people and this trend shows little sign of changing, though certainly not at the scale we saw during Jim Crow. Of course, no one is lynching members of a specific race on a large scale so maybe there’s less motivation to get out then there was then.Report
@Mike at The Big Stick, Mike, thanks for the link. That’s a great post, and somehow I missed it when it first went up.Report
Makes me think of the song “I’m Not From Here” by James McMurtry. The lyrics are googleable. Great song.Report