The Patriot Post® · Is All Growth Good?
This Memorial Day Weekend, I went back home to Chattanooga, Tennessee. I did not go to see my family (although that was an added bonus), nor did I go to spend the holiday on the lake. I went home to work one last shift at the first place that ever employed me, Food Works. The restaurant’s final day of operation was May 26th.
Notably, it didn’t close because of any discernible decrease in service quality or mismanagement. That’s not to say that Food Works never had bad days — every restaurant does — but it was not that the food suddenly got worse or that the servers stopped caring for their patrons that ran them out of business. Rather, it was the increased costs of running a restaurant, like rent and food, along with a sharp decrease in consumption compared to previous years, that devoured what were already slim profit margins and put them into the red.
This closure is no isolated incident. Local small businesses have been closing their doors at an increasing rate over the past few years. Due to failed lease negotiations, The Longhorn Restaurant closed its doors this past February. After 30 years of operation, Big River Grille said goodbye to the Chattanooga community in October 2023.
As I returned to Chattanooga this weekend, I wondered why I could barely recognize my city. As I drove around Coolidge Park for 30 minutes in search of a place to park my car, the irony dawned on me: local businesses and native Chattanoogans are struggling today in part because of the explosive growth the city has experienced in the past years.
Chattanooga is, in many ways, a success story. Between 1960 and 1980, the city lost a tenth of its population, though it rebounded in the succeeding decades, driven by its reinvention as a “gig city.” This growth has certainly had major benefits for the city’s reputational capital and prestige, but it has also come at a cost.
Some of those costs include homelessness, exorbitant house prices, soaring rent, and the crowding out of small businesses by corporate giants. But these costs are being masked by stellar GDP and population numbers. To our community’s leaders, growth is an unalloyed good that boosts our national prestige. But to those who have lived here for decades and even generations, the pleasantries associated with living in a mid-sized city with good infrastructure and tight-knit communities are being eroded by materialist desires for boundless growth.
My observation of Chattanooga illuminates an overall trend in the United States. From 2001 to 2017, the Center for American Progress (CAP) found that urban sprawl “accounted for more than 50% of the growth of the area of lands modified by humans” — a loss of green landscape equivalent to the size of 67 New York Cities. CAP is left-wing, but that stat still raises a question: Is endless population growth in the interest of United States citizens when that population growth is not being driven by optimistic natives but instead by poor and low-skilled immigrants?
Immigration now accounts for over two-thirds of our nation’s population growth. And this growth has come with costs similar to those found in Chattanooga. Here, the median home price has doubled over seven years, and the cost of renting a one-bedroom apartment increased from $780/month to over $1,100 in just three years. Nationwide, the median home price has increased 2% from 2023 to 2024 despite there being 300,000 more houses today than last year. Meanwhile, a Harvard study has found that rent is now unaffordable for a record number of people.
No one wants to link the two, but it must be done: immigration is driving up the cost of living in the United States and decreasing the quality of life for natives. According to a working paper from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, an “immigration inflow equal to 1% of the city population is associated with increases in rents and housing values of about 1%.” So, while immigration pushes down wages, it also raises housing prices. That’s what I call a double homicide.
Concerns about immigrant-driven population growth should not be dismissed as Malthusian. By no means do I believe that technological growth and food supply will not meet the demands of a growing population and lead to famine or war. History has shown that the world evolves to meet the demands of a larger human race. But this reality does not dismiss the impacts of growth wholesale — especially when the growth is being driven by people coming from countries with less social trust, less human capital, and less innovation.
We need to have a national conversation about the impacts of a growing United States. The American people are not growing their families, so why are they not being asked about growing the country?
California exemplifies what happens when these concerns are ignored. According to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies:
In 1960, California had 8.8 percent of the nation’s total population and was home to 13.9 percent of its immigrants. By 1995, California accounted for 12.1 percent of the country’s population and 32.7 percent of the nation’s immigrants.
This population explosion worsened traffic, led to overcrowded and failing schools, decreased wages, made living unaffordable, and ultimately led to single-party rule of the state. Of course, demography is not the only factor leading to California’s decline. Yes, the teachers unions bear responsibility for the Californian school system’s fall from grace. But when asked why teaching is impossible, even the unions admit that overcrowded classrooms and the demand for “English language coaching” are to blame — two outcomes of immigrant-driven population growth.
Gavin Newsom will mask these problems, invoking his state’s status as the richest one in the nation to deflect criticism of his governance. Even Tennessee Governor Bill Lee recently lauded the fact that Tennessee’s population was growing. But go to Nashville (or Chattanooga) and ask long-time residents how they feel about their cities being transformed. A poll conducted by Vanderbilt University found that while most Nashville residents felt satisfied with the direction of the city, the results were divided based on the length of time the surveyed individual had lived there. The majority of longtime locals were dissatisfied with the growth of the city, while two-thirds of newcomers had no concerns. In effect, the desires of those with greater stake in Nashville are being masked by new arrivals.
In effect, our communities and nation are facing a paradox of growth. One would expect existing residents to benefit from more commerce within their communities and seek to continue this trend. But instead, they see life getting more expensive and are uncomfortable with their wishes being side-stepped in favor of newcomers.
What the United States must strive for is sustainable, durable growth driven by technological advancement and free markets rather than a growing population or Keynesian economics. With free-market reforms, some of the burdens of growth could be alleviated. For example, it is impossible for the housing supply to meet housing demand when zoning laws make construction impossible. But even if these reforms mitigated some of the economic costs to communities, they should still be asked before their mid-sized city transforms into the up-and-coming New York City.
It is paramount that cities like Chattanooga and the nation examine what type of growth will be best for residents. The U.S. can most certainly handle more people. The question is whether the effects of this growth are in the American people’s best interests.
Should we accept the transformation of our unused green landscapes into little metropolises? Should we accept the urban sprawl that comes with a growing population? Should we accept the skyrocketing cost of living that comes with the ever-growing demand for housing? What about the closing of small businesses driven by insurmountable rent increases?
Well, I think the American people ought to be asked.
You can reach Caleb at [email protected].