[kms61]

I think this will be the fate of many cities in the Southwest unless more water sources can be found.

[NaughtiusMaximus]

Type “The fabulous ruins of Detroit” into your search engine. It’s a most interesting photographic tour of a veritable lost world.

[fieldmarshaldj]

"As Detroit flirts with demographic disaster"

Flirts ? It's been married to it for well over 35 years. A Stalinist city run by 3rd world racist despots is never going to be a success.

[Rb ver. 2.0]

I’m curious to see how NYC ends up in the Geologic record.

[patton]

Detroit's population has fallen by around a third since 1950 and now equals about 950,000.

Detroit maxed out at over 2M - current population is about 835 thousand. That is more than a one-third loss. Rising sea levels threaten cities around the world.

Oh? Banjul, capital of Gambia in West Africa, is likely to sink entirely into the ocean due to a combination of erosion and rising sea levels, according to a 2002 World Bank discussion paper on cities and climate change. The same paper forecasts that sea levels will rise between 10 and 90 centimeters worldwide this century, affecting many coastal cities, including Alexandria, Egypt; Tianjin, China; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Bangkok, Thailand.

Oh, my. I can make a computer model to prove this prediction, for a price. Send money.

[dragnet2]

In the U.S., towns in Kansas and the Dakotas face extinction mainly because of an exodus of young people. Some Kansas towns are fighting back by giving away free land, with mixed results.

Free land?

Does this cover the yearly property taxes too?

[dragnet2]

In the U.S., towns in Kansas and the Dakotas face extinction mainly because of an exodus of young people. Some Kansas towns are fighting back by giving away free land, with mixed results.

Mixed results?

That doesn't sound good.

[mamelukesabre]

Small towns are dwindling all across the great plains region too. There’s just no jobs there. People flock to the suburbs of big cities. No one want’s to live in a big city, but they all want to work in a big city...that’s where the money is made.

As long as we continue to outsource jobs and manufacturing, we are going to have these problems.

[Tribune7]

Detroit's population has fallen by around a third since 1950 and now equals about 950,000.

It's fallen by half.

[nicollo]

It's believed that Moenjodaro had already fallen into economic decline when an invading army attacked, delivering the sudden fatal blow. Moenjodaro never rose again, and the Indus Valley civilization that it dominated soon disappeared too.

Mohenjo-Daro suffered from a two-fold problem of too much success with too little change. By the time the Aryans fell upon the Indus Valley, its people had already abandoned the cities. While the proximate cause was some geological/climate change, the real cause of the Indus Valley disappearance was its own incredible stability.

This civilization had so carefully controlled its own ecological and human environment that when an unexpected variable arrived it could not adapt. Order is an admirable trait of civilization; too much order is not. If this view of the Indus Valley is correct (Mohenjo-Daro being one of its largest cities), it really was early communism. Centralization and enforced sameness yielded excellent results for a time. (Same thing in ancient Egypt). Like the Soviet Union and the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilization died of its own success.**

Whatever lesson the Forbes Mag author wishes to impart regarding Mohenjo-Daro, it ought to be built around the value for cities and civilizations of innovation, change, and adaptability.

Those who can move win.

= = = = = = =

** An alternate view of the Indus Valley is that it was an incredibly innovative society. Its ability to control an unruly river and climate was unique (being one of only four early civilizations), and the depth and breadth of its trade systems is stunning. Perhaps the climate catostrophes of 2400 BC hit Indus too -- in which case we can imagine that the Indus peoples managed it better than others, pushing through it for a few more hundred years, until around 1900 b.c. when their cities were abandoned.

[GOP_Raider]

San Francisco is also one of the fastest-shrinking cities in California, part of an overall population shift away from the expensive and geographically hazardous coast toward inland cities. A major disaster could accelerate that trend.

In the U.S., towns in Kansas and the Dakotas face extinction mainly because of an exodus of young people.

There's something inconsistent about this. How many "young people" end up moving to larger cities (like SF and NY)? Something is rather amiss with these two statements.

Rising sea levels threaten cities around the world

I see someone at Forbes watched "An Inconvenient Truth" a few times too many.

[Shion]

Well that was kind of interesting until they went off on the “rising oceans threaten quaint third-world city” line.

[ken21]

n’orleans and san fran

can terminate

as far as i’m concerned.

bye!

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks nicollo. Monsoon failure may have played a role, as it has in more recent centuries in India. Climate change may have weakened the Harappan civ, while at the same time a cold snap in Central Asia shook loose the Aryans. It's not unlikely that the Harappan civ had far-flung trade, so the Aryans would have known where to go. Of course, there is a nationalist view that the Aryans didn't come from anywhere, but are indigenous -- it is a view I ignore.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[expatguy]

Bumping for later comment

[Daveinyork]

It’s certainly going to be the fate of a lot of cities, large and small, unless they rid themselves of violent predators. I include the taking of section 8, and other, similar subsidies, as violent, predatory behavior.

[Little Ray]

Cities exist to concentrate labor near the sites where labor is needed. Since a lot of labor can be done remotely, and since most other laborers (in the West) can commute cheaply and quickly to their work, the need for cities (in the West) is no longer really there. I don’t know why people live in them.

[Regulator]

The industrious Dutch have strong enough dikes and clever enough engineering to survive a one meter rise in the oceans

Uh, the Dutch are going to be gone from Holland in a short time, leaving behind only Muslims.

The Muslims won't have a clue how to maintain the Netherlands dike and levee system, and will end up drowning, if they don't starve first when Dutch welfare dries up.

[ClearBlueSky]

If serious wagering is done on this subject, I am very confident in betting that New Orleans won’t last that long.
From where I sit I can promise that ONE more hurricane will make N.O. a ‘lost city’. More than one will erase the SE LA coast as it now exists.