Hey fun story. If sprawl didn& #39;t happen, Detroit would have a stable population of around 2.5 million people and be about as dense as San Francisco.

Buffalo would& #39;ve shrunk a bit from a 1960 peak, but it& #39;d still be 2.6 times its current population at 601,000 people at 15k people per square mile.

San Francisco, on the other hand, would be *much* bigger, with 2.2 million people compared to 882,000. It& #39;d be one of the densest counties in the country at 48k ppl per square mile and still not even get close to Manhattan& #39;s 71k.

Pittsburgh wouldn& #39;t have shrunk at all, growing only slightly from 676k in 1950 to 691k today, rather than 300k

Cleveland would have 1.1M instead of 381k.

In short: sprawl, not manufacturing, killed a lot of cities, and robbed others of being as vibrant as they could& #39;ve been.

(Oh I forgot Saint Louis, which would now have 1.4 million people and be denser than San Francisco instead of a hollow shell of its former glory.)