Shrinking pains

MASSACHUSETTS IS a loser. According to figures released on Thursday by the US Census Bureau, the Bay State ranked 50th in population growth last year, and was the only state to suffer a population decline - losing 3,852 out of some 6.4 million people.

''Good!'' you might say, especially if you're someone who fights traffic on Route 128 every day or worries about all our open space being gobbled up by developers. Massachusetts is the third most densely populated state in the United States (behind New Jersey and Rhode Island), so it may seem a matter of fairness to shove some people elsewhere - even if the logical extension of this argument is to build more homes in the Everglades or the White Mountains.

But a stagnant population does Massachusetts little good, and may actually do harm. It's certainly not protecting our natural resources from development. Population is flat or declining in our major cities, which have the roads, sewer systems, and fast-food outlets to serve more people than they've got. (See map.)

At the same time, the population is rising and open space is disappearing in the suburbs beyond I-495, and even past our borders into Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. (Rotate Massachusetts 90 degrees, joining Boston with southern New Hampshire and Providence, and you'd have one of the fastest-growing states in the frost belt.) Land is getting chewed up just to house the same number of people, an environmental impact no amount of recycling by suburbanites can offset. Commuter-rail lines only make things worse, helping people move farther and farther from high-density areas.

A few iconoclasts argue that a population drop isn't necessarily bad for the economy. Washington Post columnist Neal Peirce, who has gained a national following by charting the ups and downs of metropolitan regions, wrote last November that growth in ''personal wealth,'' not population, is what counts. He notes that cities with rapid population growth, such as Bakersfield, Calif., have experienced poor or negative growth in personal income over the past decade. Meanwhile, Peirce writes, older urban areas from Cincinnati to San Francisco are enjoying greater wealth because they're attractive to young, well-educated people.

This logic is reminiscent of Richard Florida's book ''The Rise of the Creative Class,'' which argues that cities with diverse populations and cultural amenities have an edge in attracting highly skilled workers. But Peirce's column didn't mention the problem of high housing costs in ''personal wealth'' cities such as Boston - where several public opinion polls suggest that a large segment of the population is itching to move to a state with lower-priced homes.

There's also the problem of what happens to a city that is losing its cultural amenities. Massachusetts, and the Boston area in particular, is already experiencing a steady disappearance of bookstores (good-bye, Wordsworth) and movie theaters (so long, Copley Place). And the recent merger of Federated Department Stores (owners of Bloomingdale's and Macy's) and May Department Stores (owners of Filene's and Lord & Taylor) can't be good news for consumers here. If the newly formed mega-company has to close stores, doesn't it make sense to do so in an area where there's little potential for growth in the number of shoppers?

To be sure, retail stores and movie theaters are in danger everywhere, thanks to online shopping and on-demand video services. But their decline is not so significant in low-density metropolitan areas, whose appeal was never based on vibrant downtowns or funky neighborhoods anyway. If Boston loses many more public gathering places, what can it offer to compete with the sunny climates and cheaper homes of Atlanta and Phoenix?

Besides leading to fewer stores and theaters, a stagnant or declining population may actually lead to more cars on Boston-area roads. After all, how sensible is it to improve or expand mass transit in areas that are becoming less densely populated? Meanwhile, trolley lines and other forms of public transportation are proliferating in high-growth cities, such as Dallas, that we New Englanders often mock as auto-oriented cultural wastelands.

Then there's political power. Each state's representation in the US House is based on population - and when the country as a whole is growing, a flat population means diminished clout. That's why Massachusetts has lost six congressional seats in the past 75 years and will probably lose another one in 2011, even if Governor Mitt Romney and other officials succeed in challenging the census figures, as they have said they will. Our shrinking congressional delegation has serious consequences for the state's ability to influence national policy and, not incidentally, to stake a claim on federal funding.

It's possible that Massachusetts has achieved some kind of equilibrium, with immigrants and some number of post-graduate hangers-on matching escapees one-for-one. Maybe 6,416,505 residents are the most we can hope for. But in terms of economics and politics, there is nothing ideal about zero or negative population growth. After two years at the bottom of the Census charts, let's hope that another state takes our place in 2005.

Robert David Sullivan is an associate editor of CommonWealth, a quarterly journal published by MassINC, a nonpartisan think tank in Boston. A longer version of this article appears in the upcoming spring issue, available online at massinc.org/commonwealth later this week.