Depopulation affects some portion of nearly every country in the world. In the United States, in recent decades, a third of counties have lost population and some areas have felt the impacts of depopulation for decades. Cities of varying size and location have also experienced ongoing population loss. The U.S. case is not unique. Countries around the world face a similar challenge: how to identify and address the social, demographic, and economic effects of a shifting population distribution that results in substantial numbers of places and people being exposed to the undeniable impacts of depopulation.

The Landscape of Loss is a set of projects, supported by the NSF and NIH, that directs attention to the spatial scale and configuration of depopulation across U.S. neighborhoods, cities, and counties and the demographic sources and impacts of these various manifestations of loss.