The town my parents-in-law are from, Meeker, OK, is dying. SpouseO’s grandparents still live there, and when we visited a couple of Thanksgivings ago, he pointed out all the stores/restaurants that have closed in his memory. I’m sure his dad, or his grandfather, can remember many more. Their main street is shrinking as the businesses on the ends close, and their local grocery store was in the process of closing when we visited. Now his grandparents will have to drive about 20 minutes, one way, to get groceries.
It’s sad, really.
My dad grew up in a tiny town in Iowa, but it seems like it’s still got life left. It’s still small, to be sure, but it’s doing okay. My own small Wisconsin hometown is shrinking, according to the number on the sign (it’s been going down ever since my parents moved there), but ironically it seems to be getting bigger as people are moving into the surrounding area instead of the incorporated boundaries of the town. I’m glad that these two, at least, are making it.
Austin is quickly dying. It is more of a dilution than a death though. Everything I knew and loved while growing up here is being destroyed by the hoards of souless Starbuck’s drinking, Hummer driving, corporate zombies. The the influx is quickly homogenizing this once sleepy, hippified, quirky little college town.
Where at one time I could always run into old school friends all over town, nowadays I can go years without even meeting a fellow native Austinite. Some of the people that I meet have the gall to say that, since they have been here 10 or 20 years that they are natives. No, you are not.
The increase in roads, traffic, infrastructure, and permanent cover is killing the environment and now we even have a daily smog report to plan our days by. This Fall, we will have not one, not two, but three, count’em three new toll (gasp) roads so that all these damned transplants can get to and fro to their zombie jobs.
So, please, if you would like to help prevent the death of a once great city, do not contemplate moving to Austin. There is nothing special left here worth your time.
I am currently reading “An Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan that describes what has happened to the corn belts farms. He interviews a man that is still an independent farmer. So far, it’s very enlightening.
I lived in a dead town. It had been dead for probably 50 years when the sawmill shut down. It still had a post office and a store that stocked spam as old as the store. Most folks abandoned the old houses and moved in trailers.
Some of the little towns around here are doing stuff like that. The lots are free, and you get a five-year property tax abatement and some other perks when you build on it.
I don’t know this to be true, but I’ve heard that part of our problem is there’s no land available for development, of any kind. The farmers own everything, and they hang on to it forever. Now some of them are making money by leasing land to windfarms, which are great, but they don’t provide a lot of jobs, once they’re built.
We got all excited about a new ethanol plant down the road, but there were only 30 jobs there. Our biggest manufacturer is letting 700 people go next year, and will probably close completely in a few years (going to Mexico).
This really is a nice place to live (except when it’s winter) – clean air, no traffic, decent schools, low crime rate – I don’t know why there’s not more going on.
I live in the folk music capital of the world , but the music is dying, the young people aren’t taking up the traditions, etc…
It used to get thousands of people for the festivals, but now not so much.
We are in a kind of limbo right now, we will either die or thrive I guess. There has ben a lot of new banks and a Wal-mart Supercenter (woo :rolleyes: ) newly added but I don’t think it will be long before the Folk Center dies.
I don’t live in any kind of dying town, but a province very close to mine (Soria) is probably the province with more abandoned villages in Spain. Their capital is small enough to be considered a “largish village” in my own province (Navarra) - and when you pass through it looks even smaller; not much in the way of businesses. Many small villages in Navarra have more businesses than Soria “city”.
Some dying villages in Spain are getting “new blood” from early retirees who don’t want to do the beach thing; one reason being given when asking companies to accept telecommuting is that there are people who would like to stay in their ancestral village (I know several people like that myself and wouldn’t mind doing the telecommuting, but my own “ancestral village” is nowhere near death so I don’t count); some dead villages are being turned into “rural hotels” or summer camp locations.
Not where I live, but the last city I worked in was a company town, whose single largest industry was systematically dismantled and sold off by its last owners over a period of twenty some years. What had been a worldwide company, employing many thousands in that town alone, is now completely gone (although its name lives on, along with some employees, owned by what had been a competitor). The downtown of the town has been devastated. Most of the stores along main street are closed, except for a handful, and those are pretty telling – drug stores, rental centers, etc. There’s a video store, which is needed because there’s no cinema for a 30-45 minute drive. Oddly, a lot of very well-off folks live nearby, and there are a lot of banks downtown.
There are a few boosters who are trying to keep it alive and even bragging on the internet about how well it’s all doing. But the reality is very weird – a clean downtown with a good library and other services, but very few stores, surrounded close by very poor and crumbling housing. The Rich and the Poor, and not a lot of middle class.
Neat site, I could take an afternoon and a camera and add 20 places to Texas region 1. They did have the town bought out by the chemical company that I mentioned on the list.
Yes, it must be tough to stick it out in a dying town-my guess is that local property taxes gradually become unbearable, as the tax base declines-if that doesn’t drive you out, the jobs moving away will. And for the elderly-if you stick it out, you facce losing police and fire service, so it becomes positively dangerous to live in such a place. of course, once a town dis-incorporates, I imagine there are NO local property taxes-if you can live with a occasional state police patrol and a volunteer fire department, you might get by. but of course, there’s nobody to buy your house, so i guess at some point everybody has to leave. So sad-but I can’t imagine anything lonlier than trying to live with a few other families, in some windswept great plains ghostown, hundreds of miles from anywhere. Anybody know how long an abandoned wooden house might last ? If the doors and windows are sealed, maybe 20-30 years? of course, the day will come when the roof will fail-and then the house pretty much collapses.
I grew up in a dying town; Welch, WV is the county seat of McDowell County. Beginning with the mechanization of the mining industry in the 1960s and continuing through the virtual demise of underground bituminous mining in the 1980s, the entire county has been depopulated. The last time I was back was three years ago, and I must say that the only difference between rural poverty and the worst inner-city slum is that at least with rural poverty the trees are still nice. Here are the census figures for McDowell County:
Well, Cleveland isn’t just dying, it’s been dead for decades (except for the Cleveland Clinic, which is a city unto itself). But fortunately, I live in a thriving suburb, and am too old to care anyway.
AuntiePam, I could only find census numbers for the 1990 and 2000 census online down to that level of detail; I found that particular list for the county on a web page about the history of the county.
Ah, okay, thanks. I’ll skip the census sites and see what local history I can find. There had to be more than 200 people here when Reeves was born, and before that. We had schools once!