When and Why did St Louis, Cleveland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Rockford declined in pop?

[thebeloitmoderate]

Everyone knows about Detroit and Flint's decline but there are also other cities that declined as bad as Detroit

[RINO Tom]

Can’t speak to the others, but given Rockford is fairly similar to my hometown of Peoria, those cities in Illinois (according to my parents) were hit especially hard by the recession in the late ‘70s.  Rockford actually had a 36% increase in the 1950s and a 16% increase in the 1960s before having a 5% decrease in the 1970s.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were only about 200,000 more manufacturing jobs in the US in 1980 than there were in 1970, while the population of the United States population increased by 23 million during that time.  I’m guessing the proportions are even worse for Illinois and especially even worse for Rockford, but I haven’t looked it up.  In short?  Manufacturing jobs left, the affluence of the city decreased and more people (for many reasons but mostly because of those two) moved elsewhere.

Rockford actually experienced a rebound in the 1990s (7% increase) before slowing in the 2000s (2% increase) and now declining (5% decrease) again since 2010.  Like with Peoria, the metro area is faring a bit better, as the “suburbs” are growing decently well, for IL standards.

[pikachu]

why is rockford in this list

(Though not being snarky i’ve always been curious why Baltimore has declined so much w no recovery compared to other Northeastern/Mid-atlantic cities)

[thebeloitmoderate]

why is rockford in this list

(Though not being snarky i’ve always been curious why Baltimore has declined so much w no recovery compared to other Northeastern/Mid-atlantic cities)

Possibly because of high crime rates/lack of gentrification in most of the city

[RINO Tom]

why is rockford in this list

(Though not being snarky i’ve always been curious why Baltimore has declined so much w no recovery compared to other Northeastern/Mid-atlantic cities)

Possibly because of high crime rates/lack of gentrification in most of the city

I think he/she meant that Rockford is a significantly smaller city/metro area than the others you listed, and its inclusion seems kind of random when there would be SO many cities of its size that would fit this general trend ... for comparison (MSA population, 2020):

Baltimore, MD: 2,844,510
St. Louis, MO-IL: 2,805,473
Pittsburgh, PA: 2,370,930
Cleveland, OH: 2,043,807
Buffalo, NY: 1,166,902

Rockford, IL: 338,798

I, however, knew your status as a 'Sconnie is why you included those turncoat traitors over in Rockford.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Baltimore had the combination of extreme white flight after stronger integration efforts were made in the 60s and the steel industry crash killing many of the industrial jobs that had promoted migration from parts inland throughout the 20th century up until that point. Its population peaked at almost a million in the 1950 census, slightly declined over that decade, and then began the hemorrhaging that continues to this day. The city's 2020 census population is its lowest since 1910.

[Meclazine for Israel]

I could not believe Cleveland's drop in population when I stayed there once for a holiday.

[thebeloitmoderate]

St Louis actually seen the most dramatic decline even more than in detroit lots of reasons but some of the most important to everyone
1. White flight- When STL hit peak population in 1950 north city was about half black half white, it was segregated still even for midwestern/northern southern standards, South city was still a very white community with Germans, French, Some Poles, and English Americans making up the majority of the ethnic groups there, and the Hill was about 100% Italian American. Although there was some suburban growth in westco and in the outer metro east it did not grew dramatically until the 70s to 80s.
2. Deindustrialization- St Louis was home to the busch beer company alongside Purina (dog food company) if you see above the industrial companies was both half black and half white, ethnic tensions was not as high as unlike Detroit, Cairo, Newark but still it was bad. It was also home to a well educated population making it one of the most well educated cities outside the coasts. The industrial companies had a hard time trying to stay in the city as foreign competition and less industry based companies was winning hugely and making a lot of the workers flee to the suburbs.
3. Urban decay- The Pruitt-Igoe projects was the poster child of what was supposed to be a fine housing complex turned into chaos it's demolition is depicted well in a documentary. A lot of the housing was demolished just in order to build the Gateway Arch the most iconic symbol of the city and forcing many of those folks to flee the city. It's decline is so severe that the vast majority of Escape From New York was filmed there alongside East St Louis. There is only 1 NYC filmed place in Escape From New York.
4. Crime- Obviously as soon as the urban decline is about to go underway the crime rates of the city was exploding and hitting 300 homicides in 1970. Although the homicide numbers during the crack epidemic wasn't too ridiculously high the per capita homicide rate and crime rate increased even as the country was about to see decline in crime rates. Since 2014 it had remained murder capitol of the country but let's hope 2021 can see the city go back to 2015-16 and 2018 per capita homicide rate instead of nearly 90/100k that we saw in 2020.