In case you missed it, Newsweek Magazine put out a Top Ten list last Friday. This top ten list was called "American's Dying Cities."
There's nothing like a provocative headline to get people to peek in.
For Michigan, it's the usual suspects: Flint and Detroit.
But many will be surprised that Grand Rapids also made the list.
No doubt about it, there are many urban areas around the country that are in decay. The question is, how do you measure the decay?
The writers at Newsweek said they looked at the latest census numbers (it's difficult to tell who at Newsweek looked at the numbers because there's no byline as far as I can tell):
We used the most recent data from the Census Bureau on every metropolitan area with a population exceeding 100,000 to find the 30 cities that suffered the steepest population decline between 2000 and 2009. Then, in an attempt to look ahead toward the future of these regions, we analyzed demographic changes to find which ones experienced the biggest drop in the number of residents under 18. In this way, we can see which cities may have an even greater population decline ahead due to a shrinking population of young people.
It's also difficult to tell which direction this list goes.
The cities are listed in their scrolling widget in one direction, and in their "view all" list in the opposite direction. So, for what's it's worth, here's the list (from their "view all" view):
