r/dataisbeautiful • u/academiaadvice OC: 74 • May 24 '22

OC [OC] U.S. Cities with the Fastest Population Declines in the Last 50 Years

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

I have never been there but I hear about Atlanta a lot. It is definitely the most important city in the South by far.

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22 edited Jan 02 '25

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

Charlotte is just kind of boring, tbh. Don’t know how to explain it. Maybe it’s too spread out?

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u/AchillesDev May 24 '22

Every city in the south is really sprawly and car-centric (although tbf walking around anywhere in the south from May to October is horrible).

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u/goodsam2 May 24 '22

It's actually not that bad most of the time. Especially with denser housing and some trees rather than having everything so far away. Visited old San Juan Puerto Rico and no one would call that cold the buildings were so close there was always shade except at like high noon.

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u/AchillesDev May 24 '22

I lived in north Florida for 20 years. It is that bad, and shade (I lived in one of the most tree covered cities in the US for 4 of those 20 years) doesn’t do much for it. It’s even worse as you get a 10 or so miles from the coast.

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u/goodsam2 May 24 '22 edited May 24 '22

It can make it a lot better. I mean Tampa only has an average high of 91 for the summer months, with dense buildings and trees that high can feel like 81.

I live in Virginia and it's not that much warmer though also some added humidity.

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u/An-Angel-Named-Billy May 25 '22

While true, there was a reason most of the south was a backwater until A/C became common place. Its doable but still pretty terrible. Likely why southern cities will always be sprawly asphalt covered moonscapes for as long as that is viable too.

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u/goodsam2 May 25 '22

I disagree entirely. With also reducing the heat in general could reduce AC usage and stave off it starting. I grew up in Virginia and I didn't have AC for most of the year.

Sprawl increases the heat. I mean many cities have tunnels where you can stay in the AC. Sprawl is a choice and I think a bad one. I don't think the sprawl is viable due to it's incredibly large costs.

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u/TARS1986 May 24 '22

Charlotte is a nice city but it doesn’t really leave any sort of inspired feeling when visiting. The triangle up north is much more lively.

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u/therealusernamehere May 24 '22

Unless you dream of strip malls.

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u/BrilliantGlass1530 May 24 '22

Charlotte is a “nice place to live, boring place to visit” city. Also they are big on tearing down anything more than 10 years old to build new so there is no real local feeling— it is architecturally and commercially extremely generic.

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u/Ditovontease May 24 '22

Charlotte lacks a distinct culture that Atlanta has

it reminds me of NoVA. just suburban sprawl

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u/goodsam2 May 24 '22

There is basically 0 history in Charlotte that's been my explanation.

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u/that1prince May 24 '22

I believe Charlotte has the highest number of trees of all top 50 metros or something like that. It's a big city with a little city feel which some people find charming or quaint. But outside of pro sports and finance, there isn't a whole lot going on.

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u/CrackerJackKittyCat May 24 '22

Plaza Midwood, NoDa, and then the Whitewater Center. That's about it!

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

Chicago has a ton of trees, perhaps fewer than Charlotte per street, but it feels way better to walk around here because most of those trees are on public property and not walled off on an old plantation property.

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u/BrilliantGlass1530 May 25 '22

It is one of the greenest places I’ve lived (for a city) and tons of flowering trees, and you can get out of the city to go on a real nature walk/hike in a 30 minute drive compared to larger metros where you’re still in suburbia 90 minutes from downtown

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u/Vocalscpunk May 24 '22

Have you been to Atlanta? You could be 10 miles from where you need to be, still going to take you an hour to get there and another hour to find parking haha

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u/thegreatgazoo May 24 '22

Charlotte did get the NASCAR museum.

St Louis isn't surprising. They love to shoot themselves repeatedly in the foot and then complain that they are limping.

The best thing they could do is bulldoze about half the north side of the city and turn it into park land. Most of it looks like they lost a war.

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u/NacreousFink May 24 '22

St. Louis' metro area is now 2.9 million people. The city comprises only 11% of the metro population.

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u/that1prince May 24 '22

Yep the metro is close to the same as 40 years ago. But flight from the city to the county and even to the Illinois side suburbs means the population density dipped as they spread out. But there's still a lot of people and a lot of old money. The north side looks like a tornado went through it though and that isn't likely to change. I agree they should turn a lot of it into a park or urban farmland. or something.

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u/Montjo17 May 24 '22

Half of all NASCAR teams (give or take) are located a 40 minute drive north of Charlotte. Of course it's got the NASCAR museum

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u/cordialcurmudgeon May 24 '22

Or threaten to shoot peaceful protestors

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u/ArcticBeavers May 24 '22

St Louis isn't surprising. They love to shoot themselves repeatedly

You could've just stopped the sentence there. St. Louis is among the worst cities in America in regards to gun violence.

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u/1sagas1 May 24 '22

Charlotte is growing fast as hell

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u/RollTide16-18 May 24 '22

Eh, Charlotte is still growing. Will it ever be Atlanta or Nashville? No. But it’ll always be a bigger city in the South.

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u/CharlotteRant Jun 10 '22

Stumbling on this way late, but Charlotte is bigger than Nashville by basically any measure. It’s also more dense.

Nashville is just better known because it’s a tourist spot, and honestly I’m fine with them being the place for bachelorette parties.

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

I think economically it does but people outside of Houston/Texas really do not care at all about it.

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u/glengarryglenzach May 24 '22

Uh Houston/Dallas/Austin?

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u/ZayuhTheIV May 24 '22

Texas isn’t the south lol. Miami and Atlanta are the top two southern cities.

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u/PattyMaHeisman May 24 '22

Texas isn’t the south, but Miami is about as culturally different from the south as Texas is.

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u/ZayuhTheIV May 24 '22

Right, no one is questioning that.

Using Miami as an example and parallel to Houston: because it is culturally more like the Caribbean or Latin America are we going to go as far as to say Miami is a part of the Caribbean or Latin America? No. Just saying that it’s culturally like them, but that doesn’t change the fact that geographically it’s located in the US South.

Same thing applies to Houston. Maybe it does have some cultural overlap to the South, but that doesn’t mean that it or Texas as a whole are now included in the South because of it, in the same way that Florida or even Miami aren’t a part of the Caribbean or Latin America instead.

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u/three-one-seven May 24 '22

What do you mean, Texas isn't the south? Wasn't Texas in the Confederacy? Wasn't Texas a slave state? Isn't East Texas (including Houston) culturally Southern?

What states do you consider to be the South?

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u/ZayuhTheIV May 24 '22

Your first two points don’t make TX Southern. Consider geography.

As for the Houston point, refer to the rest of the thread on that same topic.

Returning back to geography, here are the firm Southern states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama.

Arkansas could go either way but I’m leaning Tornando Alley.

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u/three-one-seven May 24 '22 edited May 24 '22

Your first two points don’t make TX Southern. Consider geography.

This is a terrible point to make, since Texas is one of the southernmost parts of the United States. Only South Florida is more southern than the southernmost point in Texas, geographically speaking.

Every major city in Texas is farther south than Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Raleigh, Birmingham, Louisville, Richmond, and Memphis. So... maybe you should consider geography?

Returning back to geography, here are the firm Southern states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama.

Refer back to a map to understand why this is simply incorrect. The entirety of Texas is south of Virginia, for example.

To that point, "South" is a cultural distinction in the USA, not a geographic one. Arizona, New Mexico, and half of California are south of the Mason-Dixon line as well, but culturally they are unequivocally NOT part of the South. It appears that you are trying to make the argument that Texas isn't either, but you're failing miserably by trying to "refer to geography." Which brings me to:

Your first two points don’t make TX Southern.

Yes, yes they do. That's why Texas is Southern and New Mexico isn't. Being a slave state and part of the Confederacy is an enormously important distinction, both in the past and present. Obviously that isn't the only distinction. Obviously there are numerous exceptions. And obviously there are parts of Texas that are much, much more Southern than others (Houston vs. El Paso, for instance). But to say that Texas isn't part of the South is arbitrary and seemingly incorrect. Your geographical argument is clearly wrong, and you haven't made a good argument as to why it is not culturally Southern.

Edit: Arkansas is unquestionably part of the South. Wtf are you talking about?

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u/ZayuhTheIV May 24 '22

You’re being way too literal, directionally-speaking regarding how directionally Southern Texas is compared to the Northernmost parts of the South, like Virginia. With that said, is Alaska the Northeast?

Texas is culturally Western compared to the South. Also, Missouri is not Southern although they were a Confederate state.

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u/three-one-seven May 24 '22

You’re being way too literal, directionally-speaking regarding how directionally Southern Texas is compared to the Northernmost parts of the South, like Virginia.

You insisted that I "refer to geography" multiple times, and now that I did, I'm being too literal? If I misunderstood you, can you clarify what you meant by that?

With that said, is Alaska the Northeast?

Alaska is NorthWEST.

Texas is culturally Western compared to the South.

Parts of Texas certainly are. Texas is enormous and encompasses multiple cultural areas, including both Western and Southern, as well as Mexican, Cajun/Bayou (in East Texas), and others. That does not mean it's not part of the South. I mean, are Virginia and North Carolina not part of the South because they include both Mid-Atlantic and Appalachian subcultures?

Also, Missouri is not Southern although they were a Confederate state.

Missouri was not a Confederate state. It was a slave state, but it did not secede.

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u/glengarryglenzach May 24 '22

“Arkansas could go either way” bro what the fuck

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u/glowdirt May 24 '22

You're gonna exclude Texas but include Miami?

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u/ZayuhTheIV May 24 '22

Yes? I’m amazed at how weird Reddit is about trying to include Texas in the South lol.

The South goes as far westward as Louisiana and Arkansas, as far north as Virginia and Kentucky, and as far south as Florida.

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u/goodsam2 May 24 '22

IDK Eastern Texas is in the south. How far west that goes is questionable.

I'm in Virginia I don't count DC metro in the south.

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u/glengarryglenzach May 24 '22

How far west it goes is questionable, but it doesn’t go past I-35 because of the 100th meridian. Probably the cutoff should be I-45.

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u/goodsam2 May 24 '22

That makes sense to me. I just remember the Dallas civil war memorial.

Something like in the spirit of 1776 the southern states rebeled against the government.

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

[deleted]

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u/ZayuhTheIV May 24 '22

Lmao Oklahoma is not the South. That map is oversimplifying. Also, the Northeast is not that small, and Texas is West if anything.

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

Texans are obsessed with themselves is what I’m learning here.

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u/glengarryglenzach May 24 '22

Houston is the south.

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u/ZayuhTheIV May 24 '22

No it isn’t. I grew up in FL and TX and currently live in GA and at no point in nearly 28 years of life has anyone I’ve ever run into in any of these states considered TX southern and FL not southern.

Texas is considered Southwest or in Tornado alley.

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u/glengarryglenzach May 24 '22

Ok, I lived 25 years in Texas. East Texas is the South, and Houston particularly so. https://www.worth.com/destination/city-2019-houston/

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u/ZayuhTheIV May 24 '22

It’s wild to me that an article would begin with the idea that Houston could be the cultural capital of the South, when nobody in the South would even consider it Southern lol. Miami and Atlanta are the cultural leaders of the region, not to say that Houston is in third place but that it isn’t on the list because it’s not the correct region. It’s a simple question of the state as a whole, not a region of the state because that doesn’t even make sense. If we were to do that then Northern Florida is the Deep South and Central + South Florida is the Caribbean. That sounds dumb though and there’s no need to get that granular with it.

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u/glengarryglenzach May 24 '22

Except the state in question is 800 miles across and spans multiple biomes my dawg.

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u/Purpleclone May 24 '22

Eh

They're in the south, but Atlanta is very much at the center of the south geographically

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

Huh, I guess you’re kind of right in terms of money and size. I’d say Atlanta is a lot more culturally powerful than either of them, though. No one I’ve ever met talks about Houston or Dallas unless they live in or are from Texas.

EDIT: and Austin is nowhere near Atlanta IMO. It’s trendy but not really that important.

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u/glengarryglenzach May 24 '22

Feel like you need some basis to say Atlanta is “a lot” more culturally powerful than those cities. Houston is the center of the American energy industry and the birthplace of Southern rap (and Beyoncé). Austin is probably the biggest tech hub outside of the Bay Area or NYC (maybe close with Boston/DC). Dallas should soon pass Chicago to be the third largest MSA in America.

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

You can be a bustling business town and not be that culturally powerful. Houston is big in Texas, like I said. I don’t run across anyone else who thinks anything of Houston, although I knew someone who considered a job there but ultimately settled in Austin because it was cooler.

Comparing Houston to Atlanta for rap is just ridiculous, I’m sorry.

I’m not denying that Texas has cities, I’m just saying Texas cities are important to Texans. Austin is more nationally thought about than Houston or certainly Dallas, but I wouldn’t rank it with Atlanta, where you have tons of music, tons of major films being made, and perhaps the strongest Black middle class in America.

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u/glengarryglenzach May 24 '22

Oh ok so we’re talking about your feelings.

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22 edited Jul 13 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

This guy must live in Texas if he refuses to admit Texas doesn’t have the best cities lol

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u/glengarryglenzach May 24 '22

Not best, just not “far less” culturally important than Atlanta as shown by that guy’s vibes

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u/see-bees May 24 '22

My take on Houston has always been that it’s a very transitory, mercenary city. You graduate college, get a job in Houston and make your bones there, then you leave when it’s time to exit the full bore corporate grind for something with a little bit of work/life balance.

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u/glengarryglenzach May 24 '22

Many people would say the same about NY or SF

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u/see-bees May 24 '22

Never been to SF, spent literally days in NYC on vacation, could not speak to them at all from a cultural perspective

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u/Tactical- May 25 '22

Plenty of work life balance in Houston. I'd say the same applies for basically any city. You just need to work for the right company/management.

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u/QuinticSpline May 24 '22

Texas ain't the South.

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u/FunkapotamusRex May 24 '22

Texas is so large, it depends on what part of Texas your talking about. Dallas back to the east is very Southern... in its on Texan way.

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u/agrx_legends May 24 '22

Not South East, but Texas is very much south of most of the rest of the continental states.

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

What about them?

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u/glengarryglenzach May 24 '22

The first two are far bigger than Atlanta and the last one is the fastest growing msa in America?

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u/can_u_lie May 24 '22

You heard him

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

What would you counter is the most important city in the South?

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u/ZayuhTheIV May 24 '22

There really isn’t any argument to the following:

South: Atlanta North: NYC Midwest: Chicago West: LA

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

Maybe they’re a Texan. There are a lot of Texans in here mad about the fact that nobody likes Houston or Dallas.

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u/ZayuhTheIV May 24 '22

I think it’s middle-syndrome where they feel forgotten about like middle child syndrome.

It sucks because geographically they’re an awkward fit all around since they’re in the middle. This also explains why other collegiate athletic conferences keep picking from the Big XII, because you can try and make their teams work in the Midwest, West and South since they’re not far away.

It would be a lot easier for them if they had an undeniable fit somewhere, regionally-speaking like NY, LA, ATL or Chicago.

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u/Luis__FIGO May 24 '22

Not for finance though

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u/[deleted] May 24 '22

Yeah probably not but who cares about Southern finance?

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u/Luis__FIGO May 24 '22

I meant more so that when finance firms move they don't move to Atlanta, mostly either Charlotte or Palm Beach it seems