I was checking out some statistics about my city on wikipedia and found out that right after the civil war St.louis was the 4th largest city in the united states. Here is what the population was at it's peak and what it was last year;

1950 856.796
2011 318.069

This doesn't surprise me when I see all these empty houses and buildings around here. I wonder where everyone is going ?

In 1930 Chandler AZ had 1378 pop. in 2010 236,123 pop.

We do have empty shopping centers which are a eyesore to me.

I liked the old Chandler, it was more of a small farming & ranching community, now it's all malls and traffic.

Two words for you: Oil boom. My town isn't oil country central, but it's close enough (1.5 hours away) from one of the epicenters. So I estimate the population has jumped +5,000 since the 2010 census.

Everything here is occupied. Everything. A business space looking to get leased out around here is very likely to be already spoken for before it can be listed in the paper. If a house goes on the market, it is very likely to be sold within the week - my grandma sold the house she'd lived in for 50 years last year, and it was on the market for a measly 12 hours when the first offer came in, and she took it. One of my former neighbors across the street from me until earlier this year, listed her house on Friday. By Sunday (two days later!), an offer had been put in and she took it.

EVERYWHERE has "Hiring" signs, and they ALWAYS offer monetary incentives for if they hire you.

It's weird, because just a half decade ago, half the mall (near me) had vacant stores, and there was a housing boom of McMansions being built but nobody buying them. My mall now? 100% occupancy. Same for the McMansions.