Detroit once had 1.85 million inhabitants. Now it has fewer than 740,000. Cleveland and St. Louis, too, are half the size they were in 1950. Across the Atlantic, Liverpool and Leipzig are also dramatically smaller. When so many cities are booming, why are some trapped in decline?

Cities naturally rise and fall as technologies change. Detroit and the other cities of the Great Lakes established themselves as agricultural transport hubs before the Civil War. Afterward, they enjoyed a second growth spurt when American industry settled along waterways for easy access to raw materials such as iron ore. But their geographical advantages eroded over the course of the 20th century as the real cost of moving a ton a mile by rail dropped by more than 90 percent. Manufacturers relocated to lower-wage areas such as the South.

This article was originally published with the title Brains over Buildings.

3 Comments

1. 1. bucketofsquid 04:12 PM 8/25/11

   It is said that the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. Interestingly both of these are subject to wild variblilty. My taxes keep going up and I've survived 3 events that should have killed me. Even change is particularly variable.
   
   All I know is that co-operation and flexiblity lead to longer lives and higher taxes. Personally I'd rather be alive and highly taxed than dead and untaxed.

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2. 2. Reedman 01:15 PM 9/1/11

   The "analysis" in Brains Over Buildings about how because the presence of a land grant college predicts a more successful city, therefore, higher education predicts a more successful city was/is complete nonsense. A land grant college is a taxpayer subsidized enterprise, and represents a forcible transfer of money from other parts of the state to a single place. This transfer of money is the same reason that state capitals are richer and more successful than the average city. It has nothing to do with educational level. It is the taxpayer paying unionized civil servants at the point of a gun in both examples. It is why the fastest growing and most prosperous city during our Great Recession is Washington DC.

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3. 3. scots engineer 10:38 AM 9/13/11

   The title of this article should maybe be qualified a bit.Dr Jerry Pournelle's website give's abundant evidence that the terms and conditions of employment in many of your state schools is more about security of employment for mediocre and poor teachers than quality of education ( and it is little better in Britain )So improve the quality of what your school pupils experience and everything else will follow

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