No love for the Rust Belt

In my most non-scientific of non-scientific polls - which has been open for 100 days - not a single person stated a preference for living in the Rust Belt over the Sun Belt. Given what has been happening in this country in terms of domestic migration for the last 55 years or so, most demographers would refer to this as something called "common sense." As a person who has now experienced Rust Belt life firsthand for an extended period of time, I can politely say "Thanks, but no thanks."

For the record, the Rust Belt officially includes all of Ohio, nearly all of Michigan and Pennsylvania, more than half of Indiana, and parts of Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and New York (Upstate only.) There are any number of metro areas that are considered "geographical outliers" of the Rust Belt, most notably the St. Louis area. The Sun Belt includes Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and California - and maybe North Carolina and Tennessee, which only arguably have Sun Belt climates but unquestionably have seen Sun Belt growth.

But we have to wonder - is this continuous pattern of Northeast and Midwest to Southeast and Southwest migration sustainable? We're still not entirely sure what the long term effects will be of rural depopulation in places like Kansas and the Dakotas. I have now seen both sides of the coin, and I cannot say based on my own experiences whether or not "low/negative growth" or "super-high growth" is the better model to follow. Miami has horrible traffic and overcrowded schools, but a thriving economy (at least before the housing/financial mess) and a type of cultural diversity and energy that is just not found in the Rust Belt. On the other hand, Pittsburgh's Rush Hour is a joke and the city at times can feel quite empty, having been built for 680,000 people but currently barely having 300,000 residents - it is hardly a thriving place, and yet it avoids the types of overcrowding and "demographic strain" issues with which states like Florida and California have long been dealing.

The best answer is probably the happy medium of "moderate, managed growth." Louisville, Kentucky went into a period of sustained decline from 1950 through the end of the 1980's, and literature from that period is replete with references to Louisville as the "southernmost city of the Rust Belt." Yet now, under the leadership of the brilliant "mayor for life" Jerry Abramson, the city is experiencing a wave of revitalization, moderate population increase, and gentrification of once-blighted neighborhoods. Parts of the region definitely still have a Rust Belt vibe, but overall the city is doing remarkably well as compared to its state 30 years ago. It seems to have reached that "moderate middle" road on growth - Louisville would never pass as a Sun Belt city in a milion years, but it now has very little in common with cities such as Detroit and Cleveland - i.e., moribund economies and negative growth rates.

Although they will remain high-growth states for decades to come, perhaps places such as Arizona, California, and Florida will fully learn the lessons of the real estate and financial meltdowns, more carefully considering and managing the long-term implications of growth. Only time will tell.

As a concluding note, below is a sheet containing data on domestic migration (i.e., where people inside the country are moving) for four Rust Belt states - Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and Michigan - along with the four Sun Belt states of Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and California. All of these states are gaining population, but the Rust Belt stats are growing only because of a positive birth rate (i.e., more births than deaths, and this natural surplus makes up for people who move out.) California is an enormous outlier; a complex cocktail of factors - taxes, wildly unaffordable real estate, perceived and in some cases real decline in quality of life - are temporarily pushing Americans out of California, but the state overall is still growing due to foreign immigration. USA Today's weekend edition just had a very interesting front-page story on the remarkable woes facing the Golden State, which you can read here.

And if you'd like to see how each state fared in terms of domestic migration, you can access the full Census spreadsheet here.

2000 - 2006: Net Internal (Domestic) Migration
State	Net Internal Migration
(Rust Belt)
Michigan	(239,349)
New York	(1,242,869)
Ohio	(237,819)
Pennsylvania	(27,718)
(Sun Belt)
Arizona	541,283
California	(950,592)
Florida	1,221,540
Nevada	318,182