Future of Houston #3: Is Houston like Cleveland (#2)?

 

"The city of Cleveland has had a colorful history. The Cuyahoga River, which runs through the city, famously caught fire in 1969 thanks to rampant pollution, and it wasn't the first time. In 1978 it became the first U.S. city to default on its debts since the Great Depression. Cleveland sports fans have had to endure more anguish than those in any other city. The city has been dubbed with a less than endearing nickname: the Mistake by the Lake. This year Cleveland takes the top spot in our third annual ranking of America's Most Miserable Cities."

-Forbes Magazine, 2010

This post is part of a series on the future of Houston, Texas (the "energy capital of the world") as it faces climate change and a changing world economy. In the last post I started analyzing a claim that Houston may end up like Cleveland, a city that once was among America's largest but has now shed more than half of its population in the last 50 years. The two major trends worth considering before comparing Cleveland against Houston are: how did Cleveland's economy change over that period and how did the demographics change. We previously considered the economy; below we consider demographics and migration patterns to understand why people came in and out of Cleveland.

People move in and out. They move across continents and oceans. They go into and out of cities. Cleveland is no different. With the exception that, recently, the final score has been net negative.
    Big migration waves have names attached to them. Cleveland became a ‘top 10 city’ in the US by the 1890s. This era started due to the “new immigration” of peoples from (non-Northern) European countries. It then grew due to the first “great migration” of southern African Americans. But then it started to falter because of the “white flight” to the suburbs as well as the “sun belt” exodus back to the southern US. That is Cleveland’s population boom and bust in waves, both in and out.
    After the bust was in full swing, Cleveland saw a series of minor migrations in. These include successive spanish-speaking groups from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba, and South and Central America, as well as South and East Asians from China, Korea, Vietnam and India and Pakistan. These patterns were smaller but more diverse as a result of the reduction of ethnic biases following the repeal of the National Origins Act. They softened Cleveland’s fall, but didn’t stop it. Even today Cleveland, and greater northeast Ohio, continues to see a slow uptick of diverse immigration, but a more substantial drain of ‘white’ populations to other areas of the state (like Columbus) and other regions of the US.
    The important question about these migrations is to ask whether there were any aspects about them that were particular to Cleveland. Or were these larger historical moments that a city like Houston should worry about? It’s not clear on the surface, but most of these waves appear to be tied to US immigration laws and global pressures pushing and pulling people to the American continent.

These immigration laws go as far back as the naturalization act of 1790, which set the foundation for how someone could become a citizen of the new American country. It was limited to, “any alien, being a free white person” subject to a few other parameters, such as length of stay, taking an oath, and having good character. This enabled white, European migration to flow naturally, in line with pressures from famines, wars, and oppression. This permitted the eventual “new immigration” of peoples from Southern and Eastern Europe who poured into places like Cleveland for the next 150 years.
    Laws passed in 1795, 1798, and 1802 tweaked the length of stay requirement, but others during this period also granted to the president the right to remove any immigrant deemed dangerous or whose home country was at war with the US. Other laws tweaked the length of stay requirement, but the remainder of the 1800s, through the civil war, had little adjustment. But in 1870 an extension was made: to “aliens of African nativity and .. of African descent.” This Naturalization Act of 1870 was made for former slaves as a way to become Americans, formally, for the first time. This loosening helped play a role in the great migration(s) of African Americans to follow. And the great migrations ultimately played a role in white flight, as European Americans, both new and old, moved to housing just outside of cities like Cleveland.
    These and other migration waves were impacted by global pressures as well, which both pushed people from their homes and pulled them into cities like Cleveland. Those Europeans of the “new immigration” ran from famines in Northern Europe (“Irish potato famine” and the “Lithuanian famine of 1867”), religious oppression in Russia (“Pogroms”), failed revolutions in central Europe (“Springtime of Nations”), and forced assimilation in Italy (“Risorgimento”) and former Austro-Hungary (“Magyarization”). Lacking restrictions for whites permitted these waves to exist in considerable size.

The question now is whether these pushing and pulling forces have analogues at the present. More importantly, which of these demographic forces could impact Houston? In my next post, I'll consider these migration questions as well as those related to Cleveland's economic history.



-Brandt Weathers, July 24, 2022