A Snapshot on the Decline of American Cities
Paris of the West? Not Anymore
The West Coast featured some of the Whitest cities in America by the 1960s.
Largely unaffected by the Second Great Migration, these cities were rapidly growing, wealthy, and shifting the center of the nation Westward. From 1940 to 1960 the population of Seattle grew by 200,000 while the population of Portland grew by some 70,000 and Los Angeles experienced a population boom of nearly 1 million people.
Wealth, innovation, technological development, and significant centers of trade were established up and down the West Coast’s rapidly expanding White cities, but the project clearly did not last.
But mass immigration has transformed them, drastically increasing their Asian and Hispanic populations while displacing Whites.
Seattle, and Washington State, used to have a violent crime rate far below the national average, but this is no longer the case. Violent crime in the city has spiked and continues to rise, while the state of Washington’s violent crime rate now matches that of the rest of the nation.
Even today cities like Portland, which are incredibly left-wing, are lambasted as evil for being "The Whitest City in America" despite decades of demographic change at the expense of the Whites who founded these cities. This is happening despite the fact that the non-White population of the city has driven a massive increase in theft.
In 2022 theft rates were up 88% on the previous year, while between 2023 and 2024 the rate of theft has jumped another 38%. Portland is now #5 in the nation for car theft and shops and markets all around the city are closing as unpunished thievery damages their viability.
And then there is Los Angeles. Whether it be Hispanic serial killers or the record number of homeless, the city is in dire straights in its post-White era.
This doesn’t mean that these Whites are without policy options. The majority of voters in these states, even in California, are still White and could still turn back the tide of the Great Replacement if they were informed and motivated to do so.
The industrial Midwest was once one of the richest areas in the entire world. No region (of the world) had a more robust, productive, and secure middle class.
Today the Great Lakes States and their once-renowned cities are in serious decline. Demographically, culturally, and economically. The White population of the area faces increasing poverty, and at the same time, they are being deliberately demographically replaced by their state governments.
In the 1960s, at the height of American economic might, Michigan possessed the 6th largest economy in the United States. Ahead of states like Florida and Texas, and larger than most Western European nations at the time. Michiganders enjoyed a per capita income some 20 points (and thousands of dollars) higher than the national average.
It was within this ecosystem that Detroit became the richest city in America. In the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, Detroit was perhaps the richest city in the world.
Today Detroit has become the most impoverished city in America with an incredibly small White population, a shrinking Black population, and continual stories about Detroit’s “coming back” amounting to little else but talk.
Across Lake Michigan, Chicago has become one of the most violent cities in the world.
50 shootings in a single weekend is not out of the ordinary for the windy city, and young couples getting ambushed or caught in the crossfire of two ‘dueling’ ghetto dwellers has become all too common.
The same is true of Milwaukee where homicides peaked during and after the COVID-19 period. The now non-White city also suffered years of economic stagnation, business closures, and a lack of capital to deal with critical infrastructure projects.
The Midwest once boasted 30% of the nation’s population and was viewed as one of the crucial political powerhouses of the nation. The industrial states determined elections and provided the nation with numerous presidents from Lincoln to Grant to Truman.
Today the Midwest has barely 20% of the nation’s population and its political influence has largely declined. While Iowa retains the “swing state” label in population culture, and Ohio is often projected as a Republica heavyweight, the reality of their small populations and declining economies has largely stripped them of real influence.
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