Snowbelt-to-Sunbelt migration? Not to worry -- we got Break Wind and Amazon.

As of 2015, Louisville metro was growing. According to WFPL, "Most of the growth is happening on the periphery. If you were in, what we call, the city, you’re not seeing any change at all."

The Midwest Is in Trouble, by Laura Bliss (CityLab)

New Census estimates show the Snowbelt-to-Sunbelt migration pattern is deepening.

For all the talk of downtown revitalization in places like Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore, the numbers don’t lie.

The U.S. Census bureau released population estimates covering counties and metro areas today, and the picture is grim for the post-industrial Midwest and Northeast. For example, the city of St. Louis lost nearly 3,500 residents between July 2015 and 2016, representing a 1.1 percent population drop—the sharpest out of any city in the country, and a much sharper local decline than in recent years. Chicago, too, saw its long-term losses compound, with the largest numeric decline out of any metro area: more than 21,000 people, or 0.4 percent of its population. A similar story unfolded in Baltimore, which saw a rapid acceleration in population loss from 2015 to 2016. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Syracuse, Hartford, Buffalo, Scranton, and Rochester also lost thousands.

All told, according to Governing magazine, the “146 most densely populated counties lost a total of 539,000 residents to other parts of the country over the 12-month period ending in July, representing the largest decline in recent years.”

Mayor Gahan should add New Albany's name to Cities United for Immigration Action.

As Kevin Zurschmiede pointed out repeatedly during the mayoral campaign, New Albany is losing population. Given City Hall's perpetual silence and Jeff Gahan's idea-free career in politics, we've no idea whether he acknowledges this as a problem, although a case might be made that massive public subsidies for luxury apartments constitutes recognition.

A weak case, but still.

Amid the clamorous anti-immigrant idiocy fertilizing social media like so many native madrasas, and the perpetual conniving of Republican intellectual terror cells, there are American mayors speaking sensibly.

Cities United for Immigration Action

Let’s strengthen our cities by keeping families together, further growing our economies, and fostering additional community trust in law enforcement and government. Pledge your support as we work with cities nationwide to implement the president’s executive action.

Yes, most of the mayors and executives adding their names to this list hail from large cities. But Haledon, New Jersey (population 8,318) isn't.

They're not all located in "red" states, either; Salt Lake City and Travis County, Texas are represented.

The only Indiana city is Gary. There are none from Kentucky, although Kentucky Refugee Ministries and Louisville Catholic Charities are moving ahead with programs to assist refugees.  There are others, so please append them in the comments section.

I know: There is nothing in the city of New Albany's 200-year old stunted and underachieving genetic sequence to indicate interest in immigration-borne revitalization, and I can think of perhaps two elected officials here likely to be even remotely acquainted with the subject matter, although I'm sure Dan Coffey could speak at length about the voting patterns of dead Democrats.

Call me crazy, but Gahan should add his name to the list at Cities United for Immigration Action. He won't, because doing so would be like expecting one of my cats to perform trigonometry, and yet as a progressive citizen, I expect my mayor to have a pulse and do more than pander to money.

Perhaps a council resolution authored by John Gonder, who's already been kneecapped by Team Gahan. They can't hurt you any longer, John. Please allow us the pleasure of  watching as Caesar and Blair squirm in their nice suits and padded chairs.

Let it fly, and let's see who votes against it.

Governors Should Listen to Mayors on Syrian Refugees, by Kriston Capps (City Lab)

The deadly attacks in Paris may be shaping the debate over immigration in the U.S. Since Friday, a number of governors from across the U.S. have pledged to do what they can to stop Syrian immigrants from relocating within the borders of their states, despite the fact that Syrians are fleeing the same kind of violence that was visited upon Paris and Beirut last week.

Meanwhile, mayors from some of the largest U.S. cities are welcoming Syrian immigrants with open arms. It’s another example of the growing gulf between city and state leaders on civic priorities ranging from climate change to the minimum wage.

Demographics 'n' stuff, part 1: Classes of Indiana city, and Indiana politician.

If our statewide Chamber of Commerce cadres are to be believed, and I generally counsel extreme caution when surveying their tilted pronouncements, the core motivation of Indiana's ongoing Regional Cities Initiative lottery derives from the one percent's concern with impending depopulation.

Ultimately, this notion probably is about as whacked-out as Nicolae Ceausescu's pet idea of banning contraception in Romania to increase births to populate forced collectivization in agro-industrial complexes (Amazonias?), but there it is: Indiana needs more people living here, and because as yet Republicans cannot control procreation, however hard they try, this means keeping existing Hoosiers at home, and luring unwitting outsiders to take up housekeeping inside our borders.

The fact that political luminaries such as our own Ron Grooms sees neither hypocrisy nor contradiction in simultaneously espousing corporate welfare to bribe potential residents even as he chases talented young people away via the idiocy of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is something for the ballot box to decide in 2018, unless the race devolves into Grooms versus Jeff Gahan, in which case we decamp for Bucharest -- and finally, freedom from mediocrity.

Meanwhile ...

I bring this up after researching some of the esoteric requirements of the Regional Development Authority, which now is moot since the Floyd County Council rightfully chucked it aside. By Indiana reckoning, New Albany is a second-class city:

The following is the list of incorporated cities in Indiana as of July 7, 2012. Except as noted, all cities are "third-class" cities with a seven-member city council and an elected clerk-treasurer. Second-class cities had a population of at least 35,000 and up to 600,000 at time of designation, and have a nine-member city council and an elected clerk. Indianapolis is the only "first-class" city in Indiana under state law (designed to protect its status as the only first class city), subjecting it to Unigov.

What's the ultimate difference?

Although class can be an important distinction for city leaders, “regular people” often don’t know the difference, said Jamie Palmer, a senior policy analyst for Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

“It’s really just local politicians’ preference,” concurred Ann Cottongim, deputy director of the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns.

In a third-class city, the political party duopolies lose two council seats, and the mayor is deprived of the power of appointing a controller. It's not altogether much of a difference, though perhaps outweighing the bizarre distinction that I'll always recall as the very ultimate in red herrings: All America City status, which people in 1968 actually thought mattered for something.

The overall trend in New Albany during my lifetime has been population decline, although from 2010 - 2013, we gained a few hundred residents and have around 36,803 people living here.

If New Albany dropped below the 35,000 threshold, would we be relegated?

I can't imagine a single sitting politician acquiescing in losing his seat, so I doubt it. There'd probably have to be a lawsuit -- and I'm old enough to remember what currently conjoined political chums Jeff Gahan and Dan Coffey did back in 2008 to thwart fairness in mandated redistricting.

I'd suggest that we'd be better off as a classless city, especially as it might pertain to political classes.

Demographics 'n' stuff, part 2: From Goslar to River Ridge.

As noted previously, One Southern Indiana concurs with state economic development officials in supporting measures like the Regional Cities Initiative as a means of resolving Indiana's demographic problem.

Perhaps the easiest way for 1Si to move forward would be to let the accredited denizens of River Ridge decide which immigrants are fitting and proper, and which -- well, you know.

Meanwhile in Germany, a conservative mayor (this is not a misprint) in Goslar actively seeks immigrants. Ironically, just yesterday I read an article about Bamberg, where the now entirely vacated US military base has the potential to free up housing for thousands of students, assuming the government doesn't place Balkan immigrants there, first.

It depends on local circumstances, doesn't it?

Get rid of the immigrants? No, we can’t get enough of them, says German mayor, by Kate Connolly (The Guardian)

Goslar is a gem of a town in central Germany, nestled in the slopes of the Harz mountains. It is popular with tourists, some of whom come to enjoy its cobbled streets and half-timbered architecture, others to ski or mountain bike, or to trace the footsteps of William Wordsworth who penned the beginnings of the Prelude here while homesick during a visit in the freezing winter of 1798.

Now it is becoming famous for another reason. Behind the rich culture is a town with huge problems. It is in one of the weakest economic areas of western Germany, and – like much of the country, which for years has had one of the lowest birthrates in the world – it is facing a demographic crisis. Goslar, a town of 50,000, has shrunk by 4,000 in the last decade and is currently losing as many as 1,500 to 2,000 people a year. In some parts of the town, which once thrived on silver mining and smelting as well as a spa, whole housing blocks stand empty while others have been torn down.

Its problems were only exacerbated by the end of the cold war, when it lost its status as a major garrison town close to the border with East Germany.

Oliver Junk is determined to reverse the trend. The mayor of Goslar has sparked a debate that has spread across Germany by saying he wants more immigrants to settle in the town. While other parts of Europe are shunning refugees, sometimes with great brutality, Junk is delivering an alternative message: bring on the immigrants. There cannot be enough of them, he says.

James Howard Kunstler: The New York Times, human population and techno-narcissism.

Sunday mornings are the ideal time to cultivate the life of the mind with coffee and good reading, the idea being to think globally even as one acts locally.

As here, with a writer unafraid of to deploy the art of the polemic.

Twenty-Three Geniuses, by William Howard Kunstler at his Clusterfuck Nation blog

If there is a Pulitzer Booby Prize for stupidity, waste no time in awarding it to The New York Times’ Monday feature, The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion. The former “newspaper of record” wants us to assume now that the sky’s the limit for human activity on the planet earth. Problemo cancelled. The article and accompanying video was actually prepared by a staff of 23 journalists. Give the Times another award for rounding up so many credentialed idiots for one job.

Apart from just dumping on Stanford U. biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb (1968), this foolish “crisis report” strenuously overlooks virtually every blossoming fiasco around the world. This must be what comes of viewing the world through your cell phone.

The opposite of Smarth Growth is dumb.

According to a report on the News/Tribune web site, the number of vacant housing units increased 45% in Clark County during a period of 14% population growth.

I admittedly haven't checked the latest numbers but, by comparing building permits issued to population projections last year, it looked as if there was a new, single-family detached home built in Clark County for approximately every one and a half new resident between 2000 and 2009. Floyd County's numbers were similar.

We continue to waste finite resources further diluting our housing and business markets, building structures in substantial quantities for which we have no need and little use. The proliferation of those ill-advised structures is then used in an attempt to justify even more automobile infrastructure, the purpose and outcome of which is the encouragement of more of the same kind of self-defeating building.

For those of you trying to communicate about this with new Hispanic neighbors, the primary word you're looking for is "estúpido". Once I find the Spanish equivalent of "delusional", I'll report back.