Planning the Next Great Migration

Ohio is a traditionally industrial Rust Belt state that includes four major cities (Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Toledo), two cities in the 100,000 to 200,000 range (Akron and Dayton), and quite a few smaller cities. Most of the largest cities are situated within much larger, politically fragmented metropolitan areas. The metropolitan areas of Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati each hold over two million people, and those of Toledo, Youngstown, Akron (south of Cleveland), and Dayton (north of Cincinnati) hold several hundred thousand apiece.

The foodshed analyses of Julie Kurtz et al. (2020) estimate that most of Ohio’s urban areas could be provisioned within a reasonably sized foodshed if (as usual) a lower-meat diet were to be adopted. Cost of living in Ohio is generally moderate even in the big cities, thanks to the state’s blue-collar character. Still, all of these metro areas are larger than will be desirable in a resource-limited future, and new migrants should avoid the biggest ones unless they have special reason to move there. Redistribution of some of the existing populations of those metros to smaller cities and towns might also be beneficial to the people involved. There are many other communities that would provide better quality of life, as well as better governance, as we will see.