Excluding Cincinnati, how Appalachian-influenced is Southwestern Ohio on the whole?

[PerryMason614]

Originally Posted by robertbrianbush

Yes, at one time it had over 80,000 people. Now one factor that does bears consideration when discussing Springfield's population decline over the last few decades is that during those decades of decline many of those people who moved out simply moved into large tracts of new suburban style housing located in the Northridge area north of Springfield just outside of the city limits (not to be confused with the Northridge north of Dayton), where they still have Springfield addresses and still consider themselves Springfielders, and in neighborhoods that are still popularly regarded as being part of Springfield, but where they are no longer counted in the city's official population as they are just outside the city limits, and where they are in the Northeastern school district rather than the city schools. There are also a few other neighborhoods just outside the city limits saw people from Springfield move to them that could be described in much the same fashion.

So the city's population decline in those respects isn't nearly as severe as the official city population counts would make it seem.

But even taking this largely mitigating factor into account, the Springfield/Northridge area combined population is still about ten thousand off of its peak (prior to the recent immigration influx) and the mitigating factors I have cited don't alleviate the impact to Springfield's older core neighborhoods (other than the very significant fact that Northridge folks still tend to shop, seek medical services, etc inside the city limits, unlike, say Dayton, where the suburban areas taken as a single entity tend to be largely self-supporting in terms of retail, etc and where residents can often find their medical care, etc, in the suburbs if they choose) or to the city tax revenues, or the impact to the city school district stemming from the loss of these students.

From what I've seen, what's inside the Springfield City limits is mostly pretty pathetic. But you are correct that the north side of the area toward Urbana and the east side of the area toward I-70 are actually kind of decent. That's an odd growth pattern because usually with cities like springfield, they would be growing toward Dayton instead of toward Urbana. The Dayton area is one of the rare metros where the south side has traditionally been nicer than the north side. I think it's because of proximity to Cincinnati's Northern suburbs.