Planning the Next Great Migration

Vermont has a reputation for liberalism because its people are generally tolerant and value their environment. However, it’s worth remembering that they were for a long time the only state to allow permitless concealed carry firearms, which was called “Vermont carry” back before many states chose to extend the privilege to any white guy with an assault rifle. Vermont’s state motto is “Freedom and Unity” (they also have a dopey Latin motto), and the state still has much of the old New England Yankee culture, which is hard-working, self-reliant, understated, and modest. New Englanders tend to believe in helping their neighbors, if they are deserving, and otherwise keeping their noses out of other people’s business. Vermont is usually a nice state, though it’s not very diverse and African-American residents find some towns less pleasant.

The population of the broader Philadelphia metro area in southeastern Pennsylvania is over 6 million people, close to half of the state’s population, and that of the Pittsburgh metro area in the west is well over 2 million. Though not on the coast (being up the Delaware River a ways from Delaware Bay), Philadelphia is as much part of the east coast megalopolis as New Jersey to the east, and as such, is likely to be unsustainable. Kurtz et al. (2020) estimate that most urban parts of Pennsylvania would require moderately large foodsheds, over 250 or even 500 km radius, to be supplied even if they adopted a low-meat diet. These include not only the big metros but pretty much the whole eastern end of the state (Allentown, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton), as well as Erie in the northwest, and the central counties including the really quite small communities of State College and Williamsport.

Kurtz et al.’s analyses might be pessimistic because they do rely on current land use and production figures, and agricultural productivity in Pennsylvania has certainly not been maximized. The Center for Rural Pennsylvania reported in 2014 that between 2007 and 2012, most counties had decreases, sometimes of 20% or more, in the number of farms and acres farmed. In an era of temporarily high farm productivity and low commodity prices, many farmers who could have produced valuable food get forced out of the business for economic reasons—another sad failure of the great god Market. If importation of food became difficult, though some of the farmland that’s been lost will have gone under pavement or been ruined by fracking, many of those farms could be restored. I therefore do think that residence in the smaller metro areas of this state is a reasonable choice.

People conflate New York the city with New York the state. Most of the state, in Woodard’s analysis of America’s traditional cultural regions, is culturally quite distinct from the City. Historically the state was a center of manufacturing, and it has a good amount of agricultural land that produces many fruits and vegetables. In addition to the New York City metro area, other substantial urban areas include Albany/Schenectady to its north, Buffalo and Rochester to the west with their important lake access, and centrally located Syracuse. Smaller cities are located to the south. As noted elsewhere, I suggest that most migration here would best be within-state. NYC is clearly unsustainable for the future and many residents would do themselves a favor by getting out early, and staying in the state would keep them close to family, friends, and colleagues.

Over half of Minnesota’s population, about 2.9 million people, live in the southeastern metropolitan area of Minneapolis-St. Paul. The Twin Cities, with about 700,000 people, are surrounded by sprawling suburbs, often having over 50,000 people apiece. As for many other metro areas in this region, Kurtz et al. (2020) find that a foodshed of between 500 and 1000 km radius is required to feed this area now, but that local supply would be possible with a diet lighter on meat. Still, it’s already larger than desirable for a metro area, and known for police brutality. If you insist on living in a megalopolis, this might be better than most; otherwise, look elsewhere.

[Regarding Maine, note my previously expressed concern about the current population and limited agricultural productivity of this entire region. Not many people should move here.] Mainers have traditionally been a special breed. Many do very hard work in harsh environments on land or sea. The region is poor and insular, with a distinctive culture and accent (notwithstanding the recent “Southernification” of rural areas), and outsiders stick out. If you’re going to move to Maine from anyplace farther away than New Hampshire, show up wearing Carhartts and be ready to work hard without complaining for a long time to fit in. The biggest city is Portland, which at 68,000 people is hardly a teeming metropolis. I exclude ridiculously expensive suburbs of Portland from consideration, but housing is pricey in the state in general, and anyplace that’s farther south and has ocean views is substantially costlier than inland towns. The options that might seem most reasonable to the middle or working classes include the following, which are mostly well above sea level except as noted.

Iowa is a state primarily devoted to agriculture. Though this has downsides, like the political dominance of agribusiness, it also means that there is plenty of local food supply potential and a hard-working, pragmatic ethos. Education is traditionally valued in Iowa. It has ranked among the best states for K-12 public education, though the GOP government is undercutting public education at the moment, and there are 42 cities or towns of over 4000 people that have at least one college. This makes it a good place to raise kids, though if you want your child to experience cultural diversity growing up, your choices of residence will be more limited. The state has many virtues and can be recommended, for those whose personalities suit the local culture, with little or no reservation. Stephen Marche believes that it would join a Red nation after a breakup of the U.S., but I am optimistic that he will be proven wrong.

Most parts of Iowa are pleasant, though if you are a member of a minority group, you’d probably want to live in one of the “big cities.” There are 13 cities of over 40,000 people in Iowa. A few have red flags, but most are in good shape economically and socially and would make excellent homes.

Here I am starting to present comments on Northeastern or presumptively Northeastern states in alphabetical order. That means starting with Illinois, which, though it would not be my personal first choice, should have room for quite a few people. My assumption is that most migrants will be working-class people, or younger white-collar workers, who lack huge savings and will need to get a job or set up independent work quickly. Therefore, as previously noted, my criteria for identifying promising migration destinations in each state emphasize moderate population size (neither too giant nor too small), reasonable cost of living, and reasonable unemployment rate. If these things don’t concern you, your top few choices might be extremely different from mine and you had better do your own research!

Although I haven’t finished posting discussion of America’s cultural divisions and the possible implications for the breakup of the Union, I want to get more into the nitty-gritty of which areas are good destinations and why. This post is introductory material for my chapter proposing some suitable destinations in the Northeast. The introductory comments on the Southeast, aimed at potential migrants with allegiance to the Red faction, will follow in a separate post. Then, I’ll return to posting comments on individual states one at a time, alphabetically from each section unless someone asks me to bump something up.

Here’s another digression. In today’s Grauniad, there’s an ominous story about the state of water use in a less-discussed part of the Southwest. Take a quick guess: what do you think is the fastest-growing city in the United States?

In addition to the widespread urban-rural divide in America, there are, historically, conflicts among regions whose differing environments, economies, and cultures would lead them to favor different political policies. At the moment, these regions are strongly tied together by mass fossil-fueled transport of people and goods and by electronic communications. (Surely TV and the Internet are main drivers of the Southernification of rural areas.) However, the continental U.S. “homeland” alone is extraordinarily large by the standards of pre-fossil fuel empires. Several authors have noted that, under the façade of shared consumer culture, the United States contains multiple regions that are as different in culture and environment as neighboring nations on other continents might be. At some point, long-distance travel and shipping and possibly even communications will be reduced by declining energy supplies, infrastructure, and wealth, possibly coupled with extremist violence. As a result, some have suggested, the breakup of the United States might follow naturally, perhaps even peacefully.