Predicting Migration

I thought that the case study (especially the map) in chapter four was very interesting. Usually I think of moving from country to country when I think of migration, and not necessarily from state to state. I also thought of immigration from other countries as more important than movement within a country. After all, the news coverage that we get is about the controversies about illegal immigrants from Mexico, not that more Americans from the Midwest and Northeastern United States are leaving their homes and more people are moving to the Southern states and some of the Western states. Because of reading this chapter I have realized that migration within a country is just as important as migration to or from a country, and that ways to predict migration are just as essential for the proper planning of an area. I never took into consideration that developing areas must look at their predicted growth in order to plan what to build. They cannot just wait until there seem to be a lot of people around in need of schools or doctor’s offices or grocery stores or even houses; in order to have those things built and ready by the time they are needed, or at least close to the time they are needed, construction must begin in advance, which would mean predicting how many people are coming to the area. This would also be important when planning neighborhoods; how many need to be created in order to provide housing for the people who want to move to the area. If those planning the neighborhoods could not make a prediction of the migration rate, then it is possible that too few houses would be built, which would mean that the area might end up losing some of the potential migrants to the area because they could not find a place to live. The whole future of the area could be threatened if there could not be fairly accurate predictions.