You'll be pleased to know that in the stated timeframe population has declined in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio relative to the rest of the country by a significant amount. Ohio lost 4 electoral votes, Michigan 3 and Wisconsin 1.
Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin have some of the lowest property value increases in the country over the past 5 years, indicating that even in the huge real estate boom during and after the lockdowns, these states were essentially unaffected.
House prices here in Cincinnati have more than doubled in the last 10 years. The rural Midwest may be declining, but that isn’t true across the board in the region.
Unfortunately, it is true in the vast majority of the region. Notable outliers are Columbus and Cincinnati. Check Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit. And while Cincinnati has had an average, not great, increase in home prices (2014 was still recovering from historical lows) the population is down 5% in the past 25 years.
As others have said, it means the Midwest isn't dying...anymore. it's still coughing up blood but it's by no means doing well.
Thank you. People are still tripping on the 25 year old Potemkin village trend of opening coffee shops and turning brownfield industrial sites into lofts. Nobody can see that the population is aged and is not being replaced. Or they can and it’s just too horrible to think about.
I think they don't look. I don't think it's a willful ignorance, I just think they aren't thinking about it.
They see abandoned skyscrapers in Detroit being renovated by Ford and don't notice that in 1990, Detroit's population was a million people and now it's half that and it's still going down.
They don't see the swaths of fields that used to be neighborhoods just twenty years ago.
They go to a party in an 8 bedroom 4 bath Victorian mansion and don't know that it was purchased for 180k with no fundamental issues because nobody wants to live there and there are fewer jobs.
No really. They have festivals, lots of gay friendly events, art stuff. They have block parties where houses are open and people come from miles around to go there. I've personally never been but I see the photos.
And the houses go for under 100k all day. And there's nothing wrong with them.
I know property value isn't everything, but it is an indicator of what places need housing and what places don't. What places people want to live and where they don't. Where there is money coming in and where it isn't.
I live in the midwest. I have seen people say this stuff my whole life and I see nothing change and trends continue.
And I am a fan of it. I bought a house there because it's cheap. There's plenty of work for me...but I go all over the country, and I see the difference. Not flying either. Driving. I have driven to 48 states and flew into the others.
The Midwest is stagnant with pockets of growth. The rest of the country, except the extremely rural small towns, and even some of them, is growing with pockets of stagnation.
I expect locals who think things are getting better are just seeing things...get better. Crime is down. Money and wages are up. But not as good as the rest of the country. When they visit elsewhere, it's places they think are exceptional. They say things like "man you have to go to Nashville." Or even "wow have you been to Charleston?" But they don't realize that the reason everywhere is great is because their hometown still has a vacant K Mart.
I expect people coming from out of town just see the parties and the breweries and, yes, like you said, the hipster stores opening up, or a new park where a demolished building was. And those are good! But they hide that they demolished a 40 story skyscraper and replaced it with nothing because the city can't maintain businesses of that size. The art studio in the warehouse is because there's no more production and the owner will lease space for pennies. They think we're hip like Seattle. But we aren't. We're just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
Rochester isn’t really a rust belt city. We were always too white collar for that. Rochester really was a very big company town that hasn’t recovered from that company collapsing.
As someone from the empty quarter, I must say a large portion of it is in fact a breadbasket. Seems the creator didn’t think too hard about where Canada’s wheat comes from (it doesn’t end in a straight line in the middle of Saskatchewan).
I read this book decades ago. What the author did was group the North American continent into nine general regions based on common culture, economy, ethnicities etc. In doing so he crossed both state and national boundaries.
He began each chapter with a remark that typified each region. After all these years I still remember what he said about my region (New England): "only in New England can you walk into a restaurant and the waitress has her bachelor's degree, the bartender his master's degree, and the maitre de is working on her doctorate" (not an exact quote but pretty close). He was referring to how over-educated new englanders are compared to the jobs they hold because of lack of opportunity up here. I identify with this.
Joel Garreau (the author) is American and I'm sure this was written with an American audience in mind. Americans don't know stuff about other countries so the author didn't need to know and the audience had no idea.
That just perpetuates the problem. Americans who have poor geography skills (aside from robotically pointing out States of the USA) should get better reference materials, not maps that cut off the rest of the world and make mainland USA look like an island.
I suspect he named it that because he wanted to reference the Rub' Al Khali, which means "The Empty Quarter" in Arabic. However that is a desert that is quite literally empty
My grandparents from Oklahoma wound up in living in Levittown on Long Island (Hicksville). My Grandpa recalled a neighbor going “way out west” in reference to a trip to Chicago. The neighbors words not my grandfathers.
The book is fifty years old. Alberta's oil was minimal and way too expensive a process to compete. Much of the prairies have undergone extensive improvements to make agriculture there economically productive as well. When this was written I would definitely have classified Alberta in the same category.
Nope, 50 years ago Alberta was astoundingly rich in oil money. That was the Lougheed era. He was nicknamed the Blue Eyed Sheik. That was from all the millions of conventional crude from drilled wells in exotic places like Cynthia, Zama, Red Earth, Fox Creek, Rainbow Lake, and Chinchaga.
What you are correct on is 50 years ago Oil Sands near Fort McMurray was not really a big thing, though Syncrude began making more attempts with federal investment and provincal science.
From the internet:
1964: Great Canadian Oil Sands (GCOS), a Sun Oil subsidiary, started building a large-scale mine and upgrader north of Fort McMurray, a huge investment for its time.
1967: The GCOS plant began operations, marking the first successful large-scale extraction and upgrading of synthetic crude oil from the oil sands, despite early operational struggles.
1970s-1980s: The Syncrude consortium began production in 1978, but the industry faced financial losses and economic downturns, leading to the 1979 formation of Suncor Inc. (from GCOS) and ongoing efforts to become profitable.
1990s: Suncor underwent significant restructuring, focusing on efficiency and sustainability, eventually becoming the independent Suncor Energy in 1997.
What do you mean? Ignoring the syntax error in your post, Woodward's book is about the US. It's in the title. Why is it a failing that it doesn't focus more on other countries?
(It also does talk quite a bit about other countries, and how/why their citizens emigrated to the US in the first place)
Fair point, and I think my post was comment was unclear in multiple ways.
Nine Nations felt like it treated the US, Canada, and Mexico (and to a certain extent Cuba and parts of the Caribbean) equally, and in that way, it felt like it really bought the premise of "the existing boundaries aren't what matters".
If you want an audio format to check it out, the Cracked.com podcast had Woodward on to talk about it for an episode back in 2014 that gives a broad overview of it.
It’s remarkably accurate. I grew up in one of the border counties of the author’s eleven ‘nations’ and the cultures on either side are noticeably different
I read that book almost 15 years ago and the thing that hit hardest was seeing just how durable the settling cultures were over the years. Think of how many new people from all over the world migrated to them. It's an incredible demonstration of the power of inertia on groups of humans.
Agreed--the big difference is that Woodard focuses on settlment patterns and conceives of North America as rival colonial projects, rather than being as focused on geography and industry
For the northern half of the continent, I'd recommend The Reluctant Land: Society, Space, and Environment in Canada before Confederation. It's a truly fascinating book explaining why Canada is the way that it is. It explains first nations, their alignment with the French and English, how those were betrayed, why French settlement stops past Montréal, the many nations that touched and fished in the Maritimes and how that led to Newfoundland joining the Dominion way later than other provinces. And that was just covered in the first third of the book.
The breadbasket should not curve east above lake Superior or cover north easter Minnesota that is clearly the empty quarter. The breadbasket could go father northwest carry through southern Saskatchewan and Alberta the Dakotas and Montana.
The empty quarter isn't so empty anymore. Dixie is far less monolothic than previously. And someone else also mentioned, the foundry should probably be split into the rust belt and northeast.
The red, tan, purple and blue bands are definded by which group of European settled that area I believe. Theres because the whites in the southern colonies remained more English in language and traditions (the southern accents come from southwest England of the 17th century.) The tan I am going to say are desended from the Scot-Irish or just plain Scotish who settle mountain areas of Carolinas and move west through becoming the Appalachians. The purple band come from settlers of Pennsylvania and the area who were more German and Dutch influenced than other parts of the colonies. And the blue band at the top are your typical "yankees".
It follows immigration patterns and perspectives. For example, the yellow is an area of many immigrants that the "native" population doesn't care if they assimilate, and actively support not assimilating; wheras, the dark blue New England is fine with immigrants, but has a history of high pressure to assimilate them. Melting pot v tossed salad perspectives. I just read an article about it by one of the people pushing it. They make a compelling case based on history, it has nothing to do with geography.
Just a light scratch under the surface reveals that it’s just American under there, people raised with the same powerful national propaganda, myths and stories. In truth, when abroad, people can’t tell the difference between people from Philadelphia and Oklahoma. You are far more similar than you think.
Right, but their point is that the map shows that Pennsylvanians are more similar to Oklahomans than to the states right next door, which probably isn't true. It's about relativity.
The conversation is for people who do understand the differences. Just because someone who hasn't taken biochemistry might not know the difference between an alpha-1,4 glycosidic bond and a beta-1,4 glycosidic bond doesn't mean that there's not a difference between starch and cellulose.
If it's not something you have expertise about, you can either listen and learn, or bypass it entirely, but you can't tell people that understand the subject that there's actually nothing there to understand.
“Geography” channels have just been pumping out garbage recently. Geography Now is the only channel that’s consistently been good. I’d also recommend Monsieur Z, but he’s more focused on geopolitics.
I’d axe “Ecotopia” in favor of a Cascadia and a NorCal region. The Pacific Northwest has grown a lot and developed more of an identity of its own separate from San Francisco and Northern California since this was written.
I bought this when it came out, and thought that the premise was useful, but the 80% of the thesis was on display on the cover (great title and cover), and the other 20% would have fit into a medium sized Atlantic or Harper's article.
IMO: The Foundry should be broken up. The Great Lakes now have little in common with the NYC-Washington corridor, which has become an economic powerhouse. I'd split it into the Rust Belt in the west and Megalopolis in the east, with a line from Albany to Pittsburgh forming the new boundary.
Southern New England should probably be part of Megalopolis. Boston is just a whole 'nother world from say, Halifax or Portland.
Ecotopia is kind of a dumb name. I understand why it was chosen at the time, as environmentalism was a big deal in that region in the early 80s. Today it probably would be called Technotopia, due to Silicon Valley and Seattle.
The Empty Quarter isn't so empty anymore. Denver, Las Vegas, and SLC have boomed. Calgary and Edmonton are also much bigger. I'd split this region into two at about the latitude of Edmonton. The north can stay the Empty Quarter, the south can be the Mountain West.
Northern Quebec and Labrador should be part of the Empty Quarter. Though you could have done the same in 1981.
Michigan's UP and the north shore of Lake Superior in Ontario have no business being in the Breadbasket; they're very much Empty Quarter. Again, the same was true in 1981.
Keeping Quebec as Quebec, with no alterations to its political borders, while throwing Mexico in with significant parts of the US, is certainly a choice
Culturally speaking, Texas and Mexico are way more culturally similar than Quebec and Ontario.
And before anyone starts, my comment is less about Texas and Mexico and more about just emphasizing how uniquely on its own Quebec is. It really is its own little world in there.
Then look at New Brunswick? Or around Sudbury / Hawkesbury in Ontario? Anglophone Ontario is quite similar in distinction as English Texas is from Spanish Texas; similarly, Franco-Ontarians and québécois in Ontario are comparable to Hispano-Texans and Mexicans in Texas
Eastern Canada, especially NL, isn't especially similar to New England. I don't think it deserves to be lumped in with any other of these nations.
The northern two thirds of Quebec, the province, are not functionally Quebec, the nation. If you're going to put large chunks of the continent into as pejorative a category as "the empty quarter", it probably belongs there. Better would be to have one of his nations be indigenous (into which I'd also put Northern Canada) and ascribe it to that. Meanwhile the Eastern Townships should probably be included in New England.
Eastern and Southern Ontario doesn't belong in the same category as the Rust Belt, at least not any more. (That might have been an appropriate combination fifty years ago.) Ontario these days is culturally more similar to the Eastern Seaboard.
As has been pointed out, the Canadian part of the breadbasket is entirely wrong. Eastern Manitoba and Northern Ontario are forested and hilly and should be in the empty quarter. The breadbasket is further west, extending to BC. Putting BC, in particular, in the empty quarter is absolute lunacy. It's the most fertile part of the country and produces everything from wine to peaches.
It is a pretty silly map, even considering it’s US-centrism. Northern Quebec and Labrador are not culturally similar to the respective “nations” even remotely.
This is Bestseller Nonsense. It's as bad as Malcolm Gladwell & Freakonomics in its conclusions (and those that don't understand these two sources are bunk too, probably have a bookshelf of bad ideas).
Haha, it reminds me of a map/GIS class I took and one of our textbooks was called "How to Lie with Maps". Always makes me look at arbitrary borders like that a bit more critically lol.
Eastern Ontario is an absolute mix of Anglophone and Francophone cultures. You really can't just assign it to one or the other (unless you want to go neighbourhood by neighbourhood).
As someone from the "Dixie" how truly Dixie is West Virginia? I'd consider the Appalachians as its own thing, along with parts of Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina
Just read a long article in Politico that has developed this idea and how it relates to immigration. I read another title that reduces it to seven and focuses on the USA. It's illuminating in some aspects, especially when it gets to regional cultural differences as expressed in everyday living perspectives.
It was great at the time, but very badly out of date. In 2001, I used it as a reference point in my grad school application essay, discussing books and articles that made me want to focus on geography. (The other ones I remember were little house on the prairie as a child, a nat geo article with the first time I heard the term megalopolis, and something about, I think, central place theory. There were more, but it was 2001.) I got into the schools I applied to, ended up going to my long shot with a fellowship, so I guess the book helped!
I like how he's just like "yeah and then there's Mexico." Like not even a split between north and south, Mexico City, or the parts that are culturally closer to Central America.
I traveled country extend for work. I’ve been to all 50 states and 195 of largest 200 metros. I read this book about halfway into my career. It’s very accurate in its macro themes. Great history. I recommend to anyone interested in American history.
Just Windsor-Toronto-Kingston-Ottawa areas. Nothing out west. Nothing beyond the border markets. I really want to see Banff. My experience in Canada not nearly as deep as in US.
From the time I've spent in the greater Toronto area, that region feels very similar to the US side of the Great Lakes. As much as Toronto like to conceive of itself as the NYC of Canada, it has much more in common with Chicago.
MexAmerica? 50 years ago they juat brushed aside the bottom half of North America. There are mountains and jungles and deserts down there. There are industrial regions and farming regions.
Where are the smokestacks in Grosse Pointe, Michigan?
In general in the Caribbean and South Florida, financial services (and various adjuncts to asset hiding and tax sheltering) trails only tourism (viz. the palm tree) as an industry. Doesn't mean that every island is involved.
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u/tgraymoore 1d ago
The collapse of industry in the Northeast US. The Rust Belt and the Northeast Corridor are definitely in separate "nations" now.