00:00 There goes the neighborhood.
00:01 According to a new study, that's what many Americans will be saying as their cities depopulate over the next hundred years.
00:07 The study was conducted by researchers Uttara Sutradhar, Lauren Spearing, and Sybil Darable at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
00:15 They attempted to project population trends in the US up to the year 2100,
00:19 and found that almost half of America's 30,000 cities would see their population go down by 12 to 23%.
00:26 To be clear, cities here include smaller municipalities as well as big hubs,
00:31 and the study says that denser urban cities are mostly trending in the direction of population growth.
00:36 But the study says that in the Northeast and Midwest, even some urban cities may face population shrinkage,
00:41 and this phenomenon could lead to a decline in infrastructure in the cities affected,
00:45 which of course makes them even less attractive to live in.
00:48 And despite political anti-immigration sentiments,
00:51 the study identified immigration as a factor which could offset these challenges in some areas.
00:55 So what does it all mean?
00:57 Study senior author Sybil Darable told Scientific American,
01:00 "We need to shift away from growth-based planning,
01:03 which is going to require an enormous cultural shift in the planning and engineering of cities."
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