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Survey

We conducted a survey on cities with a declining population in Illinois. Asking questions about the availability of travel modes, the challenges faced by users of each mode, commonly/possible implemented solutions to facilitate mobility, and investment and funding in transport, our study provides an analysis of transportation conditions in cities with a declining population. We also provide a descriptive analysis of the survey responses and analyze how responses vary with city size and location.

Our study highlights the importance of evaluating existing conditions to implement tailored solutions to local contexts instead of applying blanket solutions that often fail to benefit the residents.

The main survey findings include:

• Access to funds is vital, especially for small cities. To cope with funding shortages, city officials resurface their roadways instead of repaving them, posing safety challenges as well as drainage issues.
• Lack of well-maintained roads can act as a deterrence to attracting more employment opportunities.
• Cities with a very small population cannot promote PT because of the low demand.
• TNC-demand changes depending on city size and location.
• In some cases, PT services are provided, but residents are not aware of them.
• Survey respondents also underscored the need for improved sidewalks to make places more accessible for people without a car.
• City officials stressed the necessity of having low-cost transport services for their aging communities to access health care and shopping facilities.
• City officials highlighted the need of special transport services for specific communities and promoting local business.

The two figures below show the top 3 challenges and top 3 solutions identified by the survey respondents. 

Find more information in our two-page flyer or by reading a our publication. The study includes a full list of the survey questions.     

Depopulation by 2100

In the study "Depopulation and associated challenges for US cities by 2100", we projected the population of every city in the U.S. to 2100. Specifically, we answer three questions:

1. What are the future population trends in all U.S. cities up to 2100; in particular, how many cities are likely to depopulate?
2. Where are these depopulating cities?
3. What are the characteristics of these depopulating cities?

To find the current trend, we inspect population data from the U.S. census for 2000, 2010, and 2020. To maintain consistency over time, we check the cities where the geographic changes were drastic and discard them. This results in a dataset of 24,295 cities that have consistent data available for the three time periods. Using population change direction and magnitude, we find that by 2020 43% of U.S. cities were losing population, 40% were gaining population, and the remaining 17% showed fluctuating trends.

To forecast the future trends of the cities, we investigated two population projection data:

1. Global 1-km Downscaled Population Base Year and Projection Grids Based on the SSPs, v1.01 (2000 – 2100) referred to as ‘NCAR data’ in the remaining part of the article , and,
2. U.S. County-Level Population Projections, Total and by Sex, Race and Age, based on the SSPs, v1 (2020 – 2100) referred to as ‘Hauer’s data’ in the remaining part of the article.

NCAR data is downscaled from 1/8-degree maps of urban, rural, and total populations in 2000 (the base year for SSP population projections) and under all five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) from 2010 to 2100 at decadal intervals from (Jones & O’Neill 2016) . These SSPs examine potential scenarios for the world's development in the absence of climate policies defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Hauer’s data used a blended model of cohort change differences and cohort-change ratios (CCD/CCR) at county level. This blended model used CCD if county is projected to grow and CCRs if it is projected to decline. Then applied autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) to develop future projections on data sourced from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) U.S. Census Populations with Bridged Race Categories dataset. The projections were controlled by SSPs grided value total sums so that the projections do not explode.

We applied Mann Kendall trend tests to find trends in our population projections. The results suggest that more than 50% of U.S. cities are expected to lose population by 2100. Here, we have presented the future trends for two scenarios SSP 2 and SSP 4 as can be found in the interactive map.

Furthermore, we inspected the forecasted trend with respect to three variables in 2020, degree of urbanization, median income, and vehicle ownership.

The results revealed that although urban cities in all regions will be gaining population, around 20% in the Northeast and Midwest are likely to depopulate. Rural places will be declining in all regions. The number of suburban and periurban cities that are likely to gain population is higher in the South and West than in the Northeast and Midwest.

In terms of median income, a large share of likely to be depopulating cities comes from an income tax rate of 12% or less. Here, income is presented based on their tax brackets as defined by Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for filing status Head of the Households from 2020 ACS 5-year median income estimates.

Vehicle ownership did not show noticeable variation with population trend. Most U.S. cities are car-dependent except a few urban cities. With half of the cities depopulating all over the U.S., car dependency at such scales will require interventions from authorities to facilitate mobility for all communities.

For details about the methodology and results, please refer to the published article. To access our data, please visit this webpage.

Video Series

In this video series, we have invited local officials, urban planners, organizers, and academics to share their experience and knowledge about the transport challenges faced by cities facing depopulation. Each video brings novel elements and is worth watching.

We find that every city is unique. No one-size-fit-all solutions apply to all cities. With this platform, we aim to create a space for people to come together. Depopulation should not be seen as a threat. It has become common and is expected to affect about half of all U.S. cities before the end of the century. The question is therefore not how to fight depopulation, but how to adapt to depopulation in a way that benefits the remaining populations.

Please note, here we use the term depopulating cities and shrinking cities synonymously.

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In this video, Dr. Maxwell Hartt talks about the history of shrinking cities and how they evolved in different parts of the world. Dr. Hartt is an Associate Professor at Queen's University and the Director of the Population and Place Research Lab.

Dr. Hartt discusses the common factors behind population loss in different countries and how growth-based planning policies make it difficult to adapt infrastructure in depopulating cities. The talk makes us realize that this phenomenon of losing population on a large scale is not unique to any country. Yet, we can find localized solutions by looking at the opportunities that are unique to depopulating cities.

Link to the speaker's website: https://www.queensu.ca/geographyandplanning/people/hartt-maxwell

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In this video, Ms. Terry Schwarz talks about the challenges with physical infrastructure in depopulating cities. Ms. Schwarz is the Director of Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC). She talks about specific experiences with depopulation in Cleveland, Ohio

Ms. Schwarz’s talk makes us realize the interconnected nature of infrastructure and why it is important to consider these interconnections when reconfiguring infrastructure. She addresses the challenges of reconfiguring infrastructure as well as provides specific examples in Akron and Cleveland. Her talk can provide a framework for city or policy planners who are working to provide services in depopulating cities.

Link to the speaker's website: https://www.cudc.kent.edu/terry-schwarz

Contact

For general inquiry, please email us at depopulation@uic.edu

Organizing team

Sybil Derrible

Professor
derrible@uic.edu
Department of Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering
University of Illinois Chicago (UIC)

Uttara Sutradhar

Research Assistant
usutra2@uic.edu
Department of Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering
University of Illinois Chicago (UIC)

Sponsor

This material is based upon work supported by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) under Grant No. TS-18-316. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Illinois Department of Transportation.