Half of the nearly 25,000 cities in the US could become ghost towns by 2100, a study suggests.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago found that in a modest scenario, around half of cities could lose up to a quarter of their resident populations by the end of the century.
If fertility rates continue to decline and the exodus from cities gets worse, as many as two-third of cities could see their populations shrink significantly.
The team warned: ‘The implications of this massive decline in population will bring unprecedented challenges, possibly leading to disruptions in basic services like transit, clean water, electricity and internet access’ as cities shrink and populations age.
High taxes and cost of living associated with bustling metropolises have been pushing people away from cities for decades, trends which data suggests were exacerbated during Covid when companies allowed employees to work from home.
For the latest study, the researchers used existing trends from the past 20 years to predict what the next 80 will look like.
The team looked at the change in cities’ populations from 2000 to 2010, 2010 to 2020, and 2000 to 2010, while also taking into account each city’s average annual population change from 2000 to 2020.
They categorized cities with a yearly drop of five percent or higher as severely depopulating, from one to percent as moderately depopulating, and from 0 to 1 percent as slowly depopulating.
For the future predictions, the researchers didn’t name specific cities, but estimated the percentage of cities for each state and region.
One of their models showed that half of the 24,295 cities are expected to see a population of about 12 to 23 percent by the end of the century in the most likely scenario.
A more extreme estimate predicted the number of cities in decline could reach 64 percent.
In the future, the depopulation numbers will be higher in the Northeast and Midwest regions of the country than in the South and West, the study’s data suggest.
More than 80 percent of rural cities in the Northeast region could lose population numbers by 2100, according to an intermediate estimate.
About 77 percent of urban cities in the region would grow, though.
The intermediate estimate also predicted most rural cities in the South will lose population, while all urban cities will gain population.
In the coming decades, there will be cities or states in a region that don’t adhere to the regional trend, the researchers wrote: For example, California’s southern coast may lose population, but its northern coast may gain population.
And even though Texas and Utah are currently growing, many cities in each of these states will experience substantial population loss by the century’s end, the researchers concluded.
Historically, a big portion of the depopulation trend has hit rural areas as young people moved to cities, leaving behind an aging population – people who were not having babies.
And the new study supported this trend.4
