Basic Trope: Riches to Rags, applied to an entire village, town, or city.
- Straight: Ever since the Widget Factory sent all its jobs overseas to Ruritania 20 years ago and closed its doors, the town of Troperville has become poor and rundown. Most people live in shabby old trailer homes and slumlorded rental units, drug and alcohol abuse are rampant due to the stresses of poverty, as are violent crimes, gangs, homelessness, The Oldest Profession, and Domestic Abuse. The school system is screwed, the nearest grocery store is miles away (meaning people subsist mostly on TV dinners, fast food, snack foods, etc., rather than anything particularly nutritious), and there are far more renters than homeowners. Other issues include slow internet, lack of jobs, a city-wide Overpopulation Crisis, and overall depression.
- Exaggerated: Within days of the Widget Factory sending all its jobs overseas to Ruritania and closing its doors, Troperville became a complete Ghost Town. Not one single person lives there.
- Downplayed:
- Troperville is a neighborhood in Tropeton, and when the Widget Factory moved to Ruritania, Troperville slowly slid into being the Wrong Side of the Tracks due to job loss.
- Troperville's Widget Corporate Headquarters goes bankrupt. It is replaced with several junk yards, slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants. The area survives as a lower class area instead of an upper class one.
- Justified:
- The town's economy was entirely based around the Widget Factory. Young men could get jobs manufacturing Widgets right out of High School and be able to afford decent homes and support families. But then, as the economy changed and globalized, all the jobs went overseas to Ruritania and the former factory workers just haven't been able to adapt.
- The factory is still open, but almost the entire manufacturing process is done by machine, rather than by hand. So there just isn't as great a need for workers, and those that got laid off just haven't been able to adapt.
- A consequence of Urban Segregation: when poorer people (often minorities) started to move in, wealthier (usually white) people started to worry about what that might do to their property values and moved out to Suburbia, taking their businesses and economic resources with them. The people that were left, not being very well-off to begin with, haven't been able to dig themselves out of the poverty hole.
- Small Mom-and-Pop stores have been replaced with big-box stores like Sprawl-Mart, and family restaurants have been replaced with chain restaurants. So there are fewer opportunities for economic growth.
- The local government made some bad choices, such as funding a huge statue of Gilligan, instead of spending the money where it's really needed (such as on the schools, or fixing potholes in the roads, or ensuring that every home has reliable access to clean water and electricity.)
- A natural disaster has weakened infrastructure and weakened the local economy.
- Inverted: A new Widget Factory opens up in the impoverished town of Troperville. People get new jobs that pay a decent amount of money (and provide a pension for retirement). As a result, they can afford to raise families in Troperville.
- Subverted:
- Many people live in modest homes, and have decent-paying jobs.
- Alice and Bob live in a trailer home, but it's well-kept, and they are able to provide basic needs for their family.
- Troperville is by the beach, so real estate is in high demand.
- The Widget Factory is open, and Bob is gainfully employed there.
- The Widget Factory closed but the economy diversified long ago, such that sentiments were more 'good riddance' to the noise and pollution. Most work in offices anyway.
- Double Subverted:
- They all work in Wikiville, which is a 45-minute commute by car.
- They are just scraping by, and then Bob gets laid off.
- Alternatively, Bob has gone from selling a little weed on the side to selling heroin and prescription pills, and has contributed greatly to the area's already serious opioid problems.
- Most people only live there during the winter months. The rest of the year, no one wants to be there. And Alice and Bob's vacation home cost them more than it's really worth.
- A good portion of its workforce was laid off when the Widget Factory decided to automate its manufacturing process. Bob only has a job because he was trained as an engineer to repair and maintain the machines; most of his colleagues weren't so lucky. (And many of Bob's neighbors resent him for this.)
- Parodied: All the characters are Lower Class Louts.
- Zig Zagged: The state of Troperville's affairs changes Depending on the Writer.
- Averted:
- The Widget Factory is open, and everything is going well.
- The factory workers and their families were able to adapt to the changes in the local economy.
- Enforced: Truth in Television, Rule of Drama
- Lampshaded: "Everything went to shit when the Widget Factory closed."
- Invoked: The local economy is based around a factory that closes its doors, a roadway that is no longer available (or no longer considered part of Troperville), a natural resource that has dried up, etc.
- Exploited: Seeing the writing on the wall Bob decides to sell or more desperately take out as much of the mortgage as possible and leave it foreclosed as he gets the hell out of Troperville before the prices actually drop.
- Defied:
- The economy of Troperville is able to adapt and adjust.
- The economy of Troperville isn't centered around just one thing.
- Discussed: "I was in my hometown for my fifteen-year high school reunion. It's changed, and certainly not for the better. Half the places are either boarded up or so run-down that you would think they were abandoned if it wasn't for the one ancient and barely-functional car out front."
- Conversed: "Troperville never did recover from losing the factory, did it?" "Well, considering that the typical life path now is either having a kid way too young and collecting welfare for as long as possible or joining the military and hoping that life doesn't drag you back here, I'd say that that's a big fat yes." "Yeah, when the local Walmart makes most of its money when the payments come in, you know that a town is on its deathbed." "I worked for the local vocational rehabilitation office for about a year when I was applying to grad schools. Believe me, I know. I couldn't, in good conscience, continue working there and giving people false senses of hope when they really had no shot at making a decent living whatsoever. It's like a black hole."
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