Lure of the Sun Belt 汉译

Americans are on the move in a population shift as momentous as the 19th-century migrations of settlers who forged the U. S. into a nation stretching from sea to sea.

While the westward expansion of the last century benefited all areas of the nation, today’s migration to the South and West comes at the expense of other regions, particularly the Northeast and the Midwestern “rust bowl”—home to troubled basic industries.

Florida, Texas, Arizona and California trace much of their population growth to the migration of Americans from most of 21 states in the northern and central sections of the country. The oil boom of the mid-1970s cast a healthy economic glow on Texas and the Rocky Mountain states, luring jobless steel, rubber and auto workers from the Great Lakes states.

In the last decade, 600,000 people moved into the Houston area—nearly 85000 of them in one year, 1974. The population of the Houston metropolitan area has doubled to 3 million since 1960, and it is now larger than the populations of 23 states. Other sun-belt cities such as San Diego and Phoenix had growth rates as high as 35 percent, and smaller upstarts such as Mesa, Ariz., and Aurora, Cole., doubled in size during the past decade.

That surge helped the population of the south leap by 20 percent and the West by 24 percent during the 1970s. the Northeast had hardly any measurable growth during the period. New York and Chicago lost more than 10 percent of their residents. Throughout the frost belt, cities are suffering a financial crunch from the loss of people and jobs.

At the same time, the South and East grow richer. Two out of every 3 new jobs of the last decade sprang up in those regions. The attraction for industry: a lower-paid work force, tax rates designed to encourage development, and less government regulation.

Political influence is shifting, too. The sun belt has picked up 17 seats in Congress at the expense of the Northeast and Midwest, and could capture 38 more by the year 2000. Furthermore, one study indicates that a greater share of federal aid is going to the Southwest and the Rocky Mountain states rather than to the Northeast.

While the exodus to the South and West is the most pronounced demographic shift of this era, the movement of families from cities to suburbs is almost as dramatic. One survey found that twice as many suburbanites now work in the suburbs as commute to city jobs.

The back-to-the-city movement talked about so much in the 1970s has yet to materialize. So far it is limited to a relative handful of urban neighborhoods revitalized by affluent professionals. The real trend is in the other direction—families moving even farther from cities. At least 3.5 million people moved into nonmetropolitan counties in the 1970s, a sharp turnaround from the 2.8 million that left such areas in the previous decade. Much of this migration went into what is called exurbia, areas just beyond the rims of the suburbs.

Dense traffic, scarce water. These big population shifts have brought old problems to new areas. Older suburbs face the same crumbling-infrastructure problems of cities. Rapid growth has left sun-belt cities with traffic congestion, pollution and strained sewer system. Car-clogged Los Angeles, for one, is scrambling to complete an 18.6-mile subway by 1990 at a cost of 3.9 billion dollars. Other Western cities face acute water shortages.

The new boom towns also have their limits as job generators. The last recession left Texas with an unemployment rate higher than that of Massachusetts. Houston has been warning Northerners not to head south unless they have job offers in hand.

Frost-belt states are fighting back with all manner of incentives to attract industry—particularly electronics firms and others in the high-tech field. Many also offer rich water resources and, in some cases, abundant coal and natural gas.

Still, no end to the sun-belt surge is in sight. Even if other regions curb the outflow of residents, the South and West will continue to grow rapidly because their younger populations mean higher birth rates. Between now and 1990, say forecasters, the populations of 10 sun-belt states will increase by at least 20 percent.