Is Charleston Dying?

Jeff James

West Virginia ends up at the bottom of a lot of “best of” lists, but Forbes Magazine seems to take particular sadistic glee in showcasing what they perceive as our unworthiness. The latest? Charleston ends up on their “Top 10 Fastest-Dying Cities” list.

Our capital city ended right up there with Flint, MI, Buffalo and Detroit as cities where people continue to migrate out and jobs are scarce. Granted, Charleston continues to lose population (prompting Mayor Danny Jones and other leaders to seriously consider metro government as a stop-gap solution). However, even Forbes acknowledges that our job situation isn’t nearly as bad as the other “dying” cities:

Of all the cities on our list, only Charleston currently has employment above the national average. Though its economy has grown slowly and the population of the area is older and shrinking, the West Virginia capital is a transportation hub for the region and is home to the state’s banking and health care industries, as well as a cultural center.

Is Charleston dying? With the rise of FestivALL, the Clay Center, Appalachian Power Park and many other positive developments, it sure doesn’t feel that way.

One discouraging impact of these lists, however, is the attitudes that can develop after so much bad news. Take a look at the “comments” section of the Charleston Daily Mail article about this ranking, and you get the sense that Charleston residents are pretty negative about their future. That’s not a good sign. If we want our communities to change, it will be up to us…not the evil “others” who often get blamed for the state of affairs.

Charleston is a great small city. Visit almost any city of its size and you have to come away feeling pretty positive about what we have. The big question – how can we turn around the growth trends and get more people excited about this area?

5 responses to “Is Charleston Dying?”

  1. Jeffery Mace Avatar
    Jeffery Mace

    I believe what Charleston is missing is any significant mass of urbanites living within the central business distract area. In many large urban metros the trend has been resettlement of the urban core and pushing away from the suburbs and exburbs. This is primarly true of young educated people. Charleston is one of the best examples of urban feel/small size. However, there is not a location of urban housing in the city centre that would be affordable to young professionals. Sen. McCabe has said that people don’t move downtown because they business support structure isn’t there, as in no grocery stores, etc. The problem with that is those types of buisness don’t have the consumers they need to go into downtown. If a developer would build a quality condo complex in Charleston, with unit costs of $150,000 to $300,000 you’d start seeing the type of people moving downtown that Charleston wants, and many of who would be proponents of or members of the creative class. So to keep Charleston from dying we need leaders, developers and citizens to be willing to invest in urban living.

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  2. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    Frankly, it’s a pretty small “downtown” to want to move down to. Charleston’s downtown consists of about a dozen or so blocks, several occupied by a bank. Is Charleston’s population moving out of state, or just out of the city? Is a city defined by the size of its population, or the size of its infrastructure, because most cities have gone through a boom and bust cycle of people moving out, the city being emptied, then some kind of revitalization attracting people to move back. But Charleston’s not that large. You can live five minutes from downtown and be outside the city limits and in the suburbs or even “the country.” Honestly, I think most West Virginians LIKE that. I don’t want to live in town, and definitely not in Charleston. I like Saint Albans because of the small town community, but if I had my druthers, I’d like outside of town and zoning rules and such. West Virginians are just like that. If you want people from somewhere else to move into Charleston, then develop those condos. If you want West Virginians to stay here and do something for their state, accept the fact that we like the rural life (how many artists and musicians live in Charleston and how many live outside?), that’s what drew many here from outside, and gear development toward that attitude.

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  3. Jeffery Mace Avatar
    Jeffery Mace

    Mike, I don’t think either of out post exclude the other. I was mainly referring to the decline of the population of the city itself and being able to set up the city as the type of environment to encourage younger, educated, and moderately affluent people into the region. To make the region better encouraging in-migration coupled with preventing out-migration by supporting the areas you mention would have to be part of a “big-picture” development goal. I don’t see how goals of grabbing new people and goals of keeping local people are mutually exclusive and both should be part of the regions development goals.

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  4. Jay Avatar
    Jay

    Let’s be realistic: the Metro Government idea is not going to happen. People see “Two Dollar” Danny and “Napoleon” Kent as arrogant, vindictive, manipulative, etc… and “Stonewall Jackson Lake” McCabe has that boondoggle tattooed on his forehead. It almost seems like they tried to find the worst three ambassadors for this thing. The mayors will shine Carper on knowing full well that the voters want no part of it. Nor should they – this will be another layer of bureaucracy which will be used to trade numbers for federal dollars like a 70’s welfare mother having more kids. The dwindling population in Charleston is due to the progress of the interstate system, the standardization of the housing industry, and the inability of Charleston officials to get a handle on violent crime in the city’s polar ends, which has historically housed most of it’s citizens. Fix it and they will come.

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  5. Heidi Avatar
    Heidi

    I doubt that the writers and editors at Forbes magazine intended to be malicious with this article. There was no depth to any of the assessments (for example Flint has done excellent things in arts innovation), they were simply made based on statistical data–which sadly shows that Charleston has a rapidly declining population (along with most other areas that have based their well-being almost entirely on a single issue). Forbes is not the bad guy here. This article can be used as further proof of the NEED for the Create WV initiative. It presents an opportunity to turn this type of assessment around. Instead of discounting these types of articles as sadistic, we should use them to encourage our LEADERS and society at large to focus on diversifying the economy, supporting the arts, exploring innovative technologies and alternative education, and embracing diversity. There are still many political and business leaders who are not wholly supporting this initiative. That needs to change if we want to move from bad lists to the good.

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