John Reed, in FT:

Detroit may be the archetypal down-and-out rust-belt city, but to call it “dying” masks a more complex reality.

Detroit is no longer the nation’s worst-case scenario, but on its leading edge, the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

Neil Howe:

If you think that things couldn't get any worse, wait till the 2020s.

From the archive, a bit of Gladwell:

The relation between the number of people who aren’t of working age and the number of people who are is captured in the dependency ratio.

Last year, in the Economist:

Victorville is typical. Other sprawling exurbs, such as Palmdale and Lancaster, are also seeing an influx of blacks looking for cheaper housing and safer streets. They reveal a dramatic shift in southern California's population, and provide clues to how America is changing.

From 1957, James Reston, via McLuhan, from 1964:

A health director ... reported this week that a small mouse, which presumably had been watching television, attacked a little girl and her full-grown cat ... Both mouse and cat survived, and the incident is recorded here as a reminder that things seem to be changing.