The Pittsburgh<\/a> region illustrates the problem with that thinking. Between 2020 and 2025 the city of Pittsburgh added more than 4,500 residents<\/a> \u2013 the highest numerical gain of any municipality in Pennsylvania, and its first sustained growth in roughly 70 years. <\/p>\n That\u2019s a success story, if you keep your focus narrowed on Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n But that optimistic view falls apart if you zoom out to the eight-county metro area<\/a>: The region lost nearly 35,000 residents over the same period. Growth concentrated in a few communities is complemented by declines elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The painful demographic reality is that for an ever-growing number of places in the United States, population growth is slowing<\/a>. Must that mean the region\u2019s communities are failing to compete for residents and businesses?<\/p>\n I\u2019m an economist at the University of Pittsburgh and author of the new book \u201cBeyond Steel: Pittsburgh and the Economics of Transformation<\/a>.\u201d My research focuses on how cities adapt \u2013 or fail to \u2013 when population and economic growth no longer follow the patterns they once did.<\/p>\n When steel towns shrink<\/p>\n Two decades ago the mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, Jay Williams<\/a>, garnered national attention by pushing policies that accepted the city\u2019s population would never return to its former peak. He made that shift a quarter-century after Black Monday<\/a>, when over 5,000 steelworkers were laid off on Sept. 19, 1977. <\/p>\n At the turn of the century, Youngstown was still experiencing ongoing deindustrialization and depopulation. Williams argued that facing that reality honestly was the only way to build a new future, a concept sometimes called managed decline<\/a>.<\/p>\n Youngstown is one of the Rust Belt communities experiencing chronic population decline. Youngstown was simply ahead of a large group of Rust Belt communities that would experience chronic population declines<\/a> over the next 25 years. Communities such as Braddock, Pennsylvania, where Andrew Carnegie built his first steel plant<\/a> in the 1870s, went from a peak of more than 20,000 residents in the 1920s to less than 2,000 today. Despite such evidence that past population peaks are likely never to return for certain communities, the idea of a city planning for anything other than growth is almost unthinkable in public discourse.<\/p>\n Yet, there is no clear connection between growth and community prosperity.<\/p>\n Many places across the U.S. and the world sustain quality of life and attract new investment while experiencing little or no population growth. Burlington, Vermont, is slow-growing<\/a> yet consistently ranks high for livability<\/a> and attracts significant investment relative to its size. Globally, Zurich and Vienna<\/a> are also slow-growing but perennially top quality-of-life and investment rankings. <\/p>\n It may even be that planning for growth that is unlikely to happen works against the goals of building a successful community.<\/p>\n Planning for the present<\/p>\n These ideas are not new. More than two decades ago, economist Paul Gottlieb articulated the case for \u201cGrowth Without Growth<\/a>,\u201d arguing that population growth is not a useful measure of community success. What was once a distant warning has become a present reality for a growing number of communities.<\/p>\n New census data estimates<\/a> over 41% of the nation\u2019s 3,144 counties experienced outright population declines<\/a> between 2020 and 2025. Of the 485 municipalities across the Pittsburgh metro region, 71% lost residents<\/a> over the same period. These losses were concentrated in the older industrial towns of the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio river valleys, where natural population decline, limited housing investment and decades of emigration continue to occur.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, what growth exists is clustered along the I-79 corridor in Butler and Washington counties, a geographic pattern that reflects suburban expansion more than regional resurgence.<\/p>\n Population growth in the Pittsburgh metro area can be attributed to suburban expansion. Communities can and, I believe, must adapt. <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/file-20260601-69-ayvuey.jpg\")
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\n AP Photo\/Tony Dejak<\/a><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/file-20260602-101-27u32r.jpg\")
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\n The Good Brigade\/Digital Vision Collection via Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n