Morton Marcus: Moving beyond normal

<p>Everyone seems to be wishing we’d get back to normal from our attempts to evade the enemy virus. I earnestly hope we move ahead from normal. Let’s aim for something better than the normal we have known since the end of WWII.</p><p>Last week the Bureau of the Census released the 2019 population estimates for cities and towns across America. I eagerly downloaded the Indiana data anticipating an article about increases and decreases among nearly 600 Hoosier hometowns.</p><p>Yes, there is a story there. The 567 cities and towns (the incorporated places) of Indiana gained 265,700 residents between 2010 and 2019. That’s 17,300 more than the entire state. Much of that is rearranging the chairs on our landlocked cruise ship.</p><p>Some see this population redistribution as the seduction of our youth into the dens of urban vice. Others view such data as saving 17,300 souls from the boring isolation of rural dissipation.</p><p>Our judgement must be reserved unless the reader has specific local knowledge.</p><p>Consider Granger in St. Joseph Count, with its 30,000+ residents. Granger is neither a city nor a town, but an unincorporated housing development without the burdens of poverty, racial diversity, and the broken families of other housing developments. It’s just another wealthy suburb, seen by its denizens as a refuge from South Bend, Mishawaka, and Elkhart.</p><p>It’s remarkably like the “town” I live in—Meridian Hills, one of 16 cities and towns in Marion County, home of Unigov. My residential area has a golf course, no retail trade, no business enterprises, unless they are run by folks working from home. My town offers no perceptible services other than street signs, semi-ornamental streetlights, and an invisible constable, while taking only 3.3% of my property taxes.</p><p>Of our 567 Hoosier cities and towns, 326 (57%) have declining populations. Of those, 167 have fewer than 1,000 residents. Of course, we have a contingent of citizens who would do everything they can think of to “save” those places, if they could think of something.</p><p>Others are concerned that formerly stalwart cities are on a path to impoverishment. We had 32 communities of 10,000 or more people lose population in the past nine years.</p><p>At the same time, 17 cities and towns grew by more than 10%; the smallest of these being Cedar Lake (11,600 in 2010), where soon one will not be able to enjoy either cedar trees or a lake.</p><p>Now would be a good time to be thinking, developing new concepts of local government, land use, conservation of nature and the built environment. Let’s not applaud “growth” built by leaving carcasses where once we thrived. Let’s have the “new normal” end the waste and destruction of yesterday’s normal. We can find ways to keep the best of what we have and not regret what we’ve done.</p>