Dying Town: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|''They laid a highway a few years back

 

A town that has lost its main reason for existing, or the support systems it needs to thrive. As a result, it's losing its inhabitants far faster than they're replaced. If this continues to its logical end, this community will become a [[Ghost Town]].

Easily spotted by the number of buildings that are shuttered or boarded up, particularly on its main thoroughfare. The streets are nearly empty of vehicles, and the grass hasn't been cut around quite a few houses. If you ask, the inhabitants will tell you [[Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here]]. At least not since the rutabaga factory burnt down, or the hot springs dried up, or Bigville got the freeway exit.

 

 

May be the hometown of a cast member, and a visit to it will explain a lot about her. Sometimes overlaps with [[Town with a Dark Secret]], especially in the mystery and horror genres. A common plotline in more idealistic stories is for a new inhabitant to find some way of turning things around and restoring the town's prosperity, especially if it is a [[Close-Knit Community]] that can rally around him. A more cynical twist has the newcomer promising this to con the remaining inhabitants out of their meager savings.

 

{{examples}}

* In the first ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' novel, as well as an episode or two of the anime, there is the town with the man trying to make philosopher's stones out of the red water.

** The [[Expy]] of [[City of Canals|Venice]] in the first anime is dying in two senses - it's sinking under the water (and will be gone in a decade), which is causing people to leave it in droves. The only thing that brings any money to the town anymore is [[Classy Cat Burglar|Psiren]].

* CGI film ''[[Vexille]]'' features this with {{spoiler|the whole country of Japan}} being the victim.

* In ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'', [[Town with a Dark Secret|Hinamizawa]] would have become this had the dam project gone through. In Saikoroshi-hen's 'Ideal World', the project ''was'' approved, emphasizing the fact that while everyone is relatively happier in this world, the [[True Companions]] have not been brought together by their respective problems, and will soon be separated for good.

 

 

* Ta'akan in ''[[With Strings Attached]]'', becoming abandoned due to the restless Baravadans going to search for things to fight out of boredom.

 

== Film ==

* Perigord, the setting of the last half of ''[[Phantasm II]]'', as it is yet to be fully razed by The Tall Man.

* Hadleyville, PA in ''[[Gung Ho]]'' until the town succeeds in luring a Japanese company to reopen the town's shuttered car factory.

 

== Literature ==

* ''[['Salem's Lot]]'' by [[Stephen King]] features a town like this...until the process is accelerated to [[Ghost Town]] levels by a [[Our Vampires Are Different|Vampire]] invasion.

** Oatley, New York, in ''[[The Talisman]]''.

* ''[[The Word and The Void]]'': Hopewell, Illinois is a dying steel mill town peopled by the old, the broken, and those too young to leave yet. Several demonic invasions later it's still standing, but not by much. It says a lot about the setting that [[The Soulless|the demons]] and [[The Heartless|the feeders]] aren't the most depressing things about it.

* Jean Shepherd gave this feeling to Hammond, Indiana in his collection of short stories, ''In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash''.

 

== Live Action TV ==

* Dibley, in ''[[The Vicar of Dibley]]'' to the point where the birth of a child was celebrated with a statue of that child.

 

== Music ==

* "Old Coyote Town" by Don Williams.

* "Blue Collar Town" by David Goldman.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** The sourcebook ''Ghost Stories'' has Fort Assumption. When the Babyhead Mine's silver veins played out, the town began to die off. [[It Got Worse]].

** How about ''Midnight Roads'' or the [[Vampire: The Requiem|Vampire]]-specific ''Nomads''? Anyway, whether it's this or [[Ghost Town]], [[Everything Is Trying to Kill You|all the inhabitants want to kill you]]... or ''[[And I Must Scream|worse]]''.

 

== Video Games ==

* The town in ''[[The Sims|My Sims]]'' seems to be like this when you arrive. In fact, your arrival increases the population by 25%.

* There is one in ''[[Mother 3]]'', which eventually becomes a [[Ghost Town]]. It's {{spoiler|Tazmily Village}}.

*** Boulder is one too, having been bombed to hell during the first war with the Legion. Only a bartender and some soldiers are left.

* ''[[Skies of Arcadia]]'' gives us the ironically-titled "Esparanza." Built by sailors from all over the world, Esparanza was meant to be a port town or headquarters of sorts for sailors who wanted to take a crack at penetrating the seemingly-unpassable Dark Rift. Unfortunately, no one ever passed through the Rift, and everyone who came back from the trip were hollow shells of their former selves. It didn't take very long for the hope to wither...

* Pyrite Town (and the base camp known as "The Under"), in ''[[Pokémon Colosseum]]'' was a former mining town, but with its mine dried up, it has fallen into a [[Wretched Hive]].

* Kakariko Village is basically this in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess]]'', but because most of its inhabitants were killed.

* ''[[Arcanum]]'' has Dernholm. In the backstory, it was the thriving capital of the nation of Cumbria, but when their king [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|suddenly went mad with power and hatred of technology]], he dragged Cumbria into a hopelessly one-sided war against the ''much'' better equipped nation of Tarant. When the player arrives at Cumbria in the game proper, it's lost nearly all of its power and prestige, and Dernholm itself is a barely held together village whose people desperately try to survive, but have little hope of doing so due to the king's ever-escalating insanity and his [[Complete Monster|sickeningly depraved]] Guard Captain. {{spoiler|Depending on the player's actions, Dernholm, and Cumbria and general, can begin a slow but sure path to recovery in the epilogue.}}

** Ivarstead is also dying a slow death. One man is reluctant to allow his daughter to go to Riften with her new paramour partly because Ivarstead will have no future if more of the younger generation leaves. The main attraction of Ivarstead is that it is the closest settlement to the mountain where the legendary Gray-beards reside.

 

== Western Animation ==

* Green River from ''[[An American Tail]]: Fievel Goes West'' is essentially this by the time the Mousekewitz family arrives, a withering old west former [[Boom Town]]. Upon seeing it Mama remarks that they'd been "schnookered".

* Dirt in ''[[Rango]]''. {{spoiler|A case of the town being killed on purpose, as the mayor deprives the citizens of water so that he can use it to buy off their land and create a new community while the old one is left to die.}}

 

== Real Life ==

=== North America ===

* Big chunks of America are filled with places like this. In the 1870s, over 70 percent of the population worked in agriculture. Today, around 3 percent of the population or less works in agriculture. This is mostly due to changes in technology of a hundred different kinds. Scientific advances have made farmland much more efficient, transportation technology and infrastructure have made it possible to keep food fresh longer and get it farther in that time, machines do the work of multiple people... so all the people who used to work in rural areas now live in suburban or urban areas, so rural areas are now populated much more sparsely than they once were.

** [[The Windy City|Chicago]] has held up due to sheer size and a relatively diversified economy.

** [[Toronto]] from being the center of Canadian finance and media (with a well-timed boost in [[The Seventies]] from Quebec's language laws which led to an influx of anglophones and businesses from [[Montreal]]).

** Rochester was dealt a particularly massive blow around the [[Turn of the Millennium]] because its economy was heavily dependent on Kodak, which was almost lethally slow to adjust to the digital-photography revolution. Thankfully, it [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/nyregion/despite-long-slide-by-kodak-rochester-avoids-decay.html?_r=1 bounced back] due to its thriving arts scene.

*** Perhaps just in time - Kodak has now filed for bankruptcy.

* The Carolinas have their share of dying former textile towns as well.

* The Niagara Region in Ontario has been in slow decline since the 1970s. There used to be much manufacturing along the Niagara River and Welland Canal, but cheaper products from elsewhere have caused all but a couple of the factories to go bust. The tourist industry took a major hit in 2001 after 9/11, followed by the SARS outbreak, both of which discouraged the usual American tourists from crossing the border. The area now mostly runs on the casinos, wineries, and agriculture.

** And there are some towns which are forcefully evacuated because their national resource makes them TOXIC. Libby, Montana is fighting a valiant fight against falling victim to this, in spite of the massive zonolite/asbestos presence that was once in the town. The Superfund project spent about two decades working to clean up the town and now certain pockets of it are liveable, though generations of its residents will still succumb to mesothelioma.

** Odessa, Texas' economy is directly tied to the dwindling reserves of oil in the area. Not good. Ditto for its ''[[Friday Night Lights (TV series)|Friday Night Lights]]'' standin, Dillon.

* In [[Seattle]], during the Boeing Bust of the 1970's, there were billboards that read "Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights?". [[Microsoft|They turned themselves]] [[Nintendo|around pretty quickly]] (Starbucks, Seattle's pride and joy, made coffee a luxury simply by tripling the price).

* Harvey, Illinois. Home of the [http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/dixie_square_mall.html Dixie Square Mall] (aka the [[Blues Brothers]] mall), abandoned since 1978.

* [[Other Cities in Texas|San Antonio, Texas]] was a dying town for most of the first half of the 20th century. Then it was announced the 1968 World's Fair was going to be held there, leading to a surge in development. The Riverwalk came into being, new downtown hotels were built, a convention center sprung up, downtown was transformed from a sleepy hub of shantytowns to a lively center of activity, etc.

** And surely [[Elvis Presley|Graceland]] had something to do with it.'

* [[wikipedia:Schefferville, Quebec|Shefferville]], whose economy was based on asbestos mining. When its ore mining stopped in 1982, the population dropped from over 5000 to a just few hundreds today. The city temporarily lost its legal incorporation status between 1986 and 1990.

=== Other ===

* Many smaller towns on the west coast of [[Malaysia|Peninsular Malaysia]] were originally founded as [[Boom Town|boomtowns]] for rubber plantations and tin mines during the late 19th century and early 20th century; this dependence on single sources of income became their undoing when the price of rubber and, ultimately, tin finally crashed for good, decimating their bread and butter and leading many of its younger talents flocking for greener pasture abroad or in larger towns or cities. The vast majority who choose to stay and contribute to whatever that is left of the town's economy are now 50-somethings or older, which is very telling of the future of these towns.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Settings]]

[[Category:Small Towns]]

[[Category:Truth in Television]]

[[Category:Dying Town]]