A shrinking population does eventually have to lead to smaller (or fewer) cities.
- 5 million / 148 million is 3% down from peak for Russia.
- 2.5 million / 128 million is 2% down from peak for Japan.
Most importantly, Russia's population decline (which started before Japan's) has leveled off. It hit a local minima in 2008. It has wobbled up and down, but stayed close to 143m for almost 20 years [1].
This is how populations usually work; they level off and oscillate around their carrying capacity. It's often studied in biology [2].
Shaving off 3% of the population of a country doesn't lead to deserted cities any more than other factors do. Natural resource depletion and economic factors are and will most definitely keep being bigger worries for cities (ie, droughts leading to water shortages, big employers moving out, etc).
[1]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=R...
[2]: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/hs-biology/x4c6733622308...
They're set for sharp decline going forward, and changes in geopolitics look likely to dry up or outright reverse their modest immigrant flows from former USSR countries.
Japan: Is shrinking ever more rapidly, not less.
Russia's population pyramid does seem to suggest a big dip once the generation born in the 80s passes away, but it doesn't look like a reversed pyramid just yet. The generation born in 2021 doesn't seem considerably smaller than the one born 20 years ago [3].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F...
[2]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...
[3]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Russian_...
[1]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=R...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#After_W...
It's easy to imagine it as some sort of famine, where there isn't enough food to feed children, or overcrowding so extreme that everyone lives in slums and it's simply impossible to have kids. If it ever reached that point, a population graph would show a sharp fall, not a steady leveling-off.
When I think about previous generations in my country (Mexico) they seem more care-free. They loved someone, they had babies. One single head of household could afford to buy a house. It was a house too, not some tiny apartment!
I look at my life though and it just seems a little more stressful in a bunch of small ways. The squeeze is gentle, not abrupt, but it's there. Living spaces seem smaller, which adds a little stress. Comparing vs old photos, the city just looks more crowded, more full of traffic, which adds a little stress. In their 20s my parents weren't thinking about the environment, but I am, which adds a little stress. I think about the living standard I could give my kids more than my parents seemed to; I just can't shake the thought that my kids need to stand out from the huge crowds of people there's now, which adds a little stress. At the end of the day all these little bits of stress add up and lead to me not wanting kids any time soon.
Perhaps this is what approaching a population cap is meant to feel like. Just stress here and there, leading to less fertility, rather than some hard physical limit.
In other words, we are like a mouse population. If a cap is reached, fertility sinks (but for mice also mortality rises as well. We humans are lucky in a way compared to mice.)
Like in many other countries Russia's population is sustained by migration from countries with higher birth rates (at least it was until recently).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F...
[2]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Russian_...
For modern times, climate change has made it impossible to insure some areas of the US (Norther CA fire country, Florida hurricane corridor, etc). Insurers are going out of business or just not paying claims.
I absolutely love the doomerism in your second paragraph. If you listen to those who buy into the whole climate armageddon thing, you would think that by 2030 large swaths of the US are going to be uninhabitable or under water.
No, the West isn’t going to burn away. We just need to resume good forestry practices and not build houses in precarious places.
Similarly in FL, this has little to do with “climate change” but rather an elimination of Government subsidized risk taking so the full insurance cost is bore by the property owners and not taxpayers.