Most observers do not associate the Midwest with urban success, but quite the opposite in fact. But while there are plenty of places that are legitimately suffering, there are also plenty of success stories out there that don’t always get the mindshare or press they deserve.
First on my list of Midwest success stories is Des Moines, Iowa. This is a smaller,, largely under the radar city, but it has emerged as one of the strongest performers anywhere in the United States. This city defines the term “easy living”, while still managing to be home to major industries like insurance. Being smaller has proven an asset here, as Des Moines has avoided many of the large scale boondoggles like pro sports stadiums cities sometimes engage in to try to prove they are “major league”.
Instead of competing for bragging rights, Des Moines instead has grown its job base significantly during the “lost decade” of the 2000s. Between 2001 and 2009, it added over 25,000 jobs – a healthy 8.9% clip – and boasts a close to rock bottom (for these times) 6.5% unemployment rate. Des Moines metro grew its population at 15.5% between 2000 and 2008, nearly double the national average, belying the notion that no one wants to live in Iowa. Despite this growth, labor shortages remain a long term local concern. That’s called a nice problem to have.
Indianapolis is another standout, with a profile closer to the Sun Belt than the Rust Belt. It grew its population at a rate 50% greater than the national average, and also had strong net in-migration,with almost 65,000 net people deciding to pack up and move to Indy. Its demographic and economic stats are very comparable to Portland, Oregon, the urban policy poster child. In fact, Indianapolis actually added more jobs than Portland – where job growth has been largely in the suburban periphery – last decade thanks to an aggressive pro-business attitude and local industry clusters like life sciences, motorsports, and internet marketing.
Indianapolis may also be the least expensive major housing market in America, but it maintains a full range of urban amenities and is only three hours drive from Chicago for those things it lacks. This is one reason Business Week just named the large suburb of Fishers the best affordable suburb in the United States. Indy has also quietly established a position as an urban innovator, with unique to the nation projects like a downtown urban trail. It is also a leader in modern roundabouts, with suburban Carmel having 5% of all the modern roundabouts in the entire United States.
Head east on I-70 and three hours later you’ll arrive in Columbus, Ohio, Indy’s “twin city”. Like Indianapolis, an artificially chosen state capital, Columbus is thriving in a struggling state. Like Indy, it also has strong population growth and net in-migration, and a below average unemployment rate. It’s home to powerhouse Ohio State University, which boasts the nation’s largest college campus, and stunning historic neighborhoods like German Village. Columbus is home to a thriving LGBT community, and the second largest gay pride parade in the Midwest after Chicago, one of the top ten in the country, attracting over 100,000 attendees.
West along I-70 is Kansas City. Described as a “zone of sanity”, Kansas City avoided the housing boom and thus largely the bust, remaining another affordable and attractive place to live. It too has had strong population growth and net in-migration, along with below average unemployment. The city is the second largest rail hub in the United States after Chicago, but lacks that city’s legendary rail congestion. Unsurprisingly, rail carriers are investing heavily there. With rail connectivity to Mexican ports, and sitting along I-35, Kansas City is looking to be one of the winners of NAFTA. Plentiful fountains and miles of lush parkways make Kansas City a lovely city. It is also a cultural hub, with the respected Nelson-Aktins Museum at the high end and the thriving Crossroads Art District on the grass roots side.
Madison, Wisconsin is one of the rare Midwest cities that actually gets national respect. Its location along a narrow isthmus creates a charming physical setting and compact urban core. Home to the University of Wisconsin, its progressive credentials are unimpeachable. But it is also an economic success story, with strong job growth of 6.6% from 2001-2009, along with impressive population growth. Part of this is the university’s powerhouse researchers, who attracted the likes of Google to open an office. The city is also the state capital. Despite being a smaller city, it boasts amenities worthy of America’s elite metropolises, including super-high end denim retailer Context Clothing and the luxurious Candinas Chocolatier.
Despite its reputation for frigid weather and its geographically peripheral location, Minneapolis-St. Paul offers both economic strength and high quality of life. Its residents embrace the recreational opportunities provided by numerous nearby lakes, including several inside the Minneapolis city limits, as well as the winter. The region was early to the starchitect game, with Frank Gehry designing the metallic Weisman Art Center before the Bilbao Guggenheim. But it’s not all fun and games there. The region has an unemployment rate well below average and a GDP per capita well above it. It is home to numerous household name firms like Target, Best Buy, and 3M. And it is a center for the medical device industry.
These six cities show that there’s a lot more to the Midwest than rusted steel mills, shuttered auto plants, and abandoned houses. It is also home to healthy cities and thriving suburban communities that are outpacing the nation demographically and economically. These places offer affordability and a high quality of life, but still manage to feature many more urban amenities and innovations than commonly assumed. These characteristics make them well-positioned to be among the urban winners in the 21st century.
Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile.
Comments
36 responses to “Midwest Success Stories”
I liked the post on Midwest success stories. I grew up in Chicago, and lived in Madison for two years. I also spent significant amounts of time in the Des Moines area, Minneapolis-St.Paul, and Kansas City back in my itinerant IT consulting days. Madison, Des Moines, the Twin Cities and KC all have a lot going for them and are much more affordable than cities on either coast.
It would be interesting to know how education levels in these cities compare to those in more struggling cities – I would imagine they are notably higher, and I suspect this may be part of the reason for their success (although it’s kind of a chicken and egg question).
It’s also interesting to me that Minneapolis-St. Paul, Madison and Columbus are all both the state capitol and home to the premier state university. DesMoines and Indy are state capitols, although not home to flagship universities. Although the right-wingers among us would hate to admit this, the relatively stable employment base provided by government and large institutions has undoubtedly played a part in the overall economic success of these cities. The presence of the universities also provides a large built-in educated workforce.
Kansas City is the outlier here…and while it’s region may be fairly successful economy, there is a much higher concentration of poverty in the urban core than there is in any of the other cities that you mentioned.
Of course, these are all just off-the-cuff speculations.
This is a bit of a digression, but I think the concept of the “Midwest” is a well-defined, unified region is problematic. I have always made a distinction between the Great Lakes Industrial belt, which I which define more or less as including Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo and arguably Pittsburgh, and other regions commonly included under the rubric of the Midwest. All of the Great Lakes cities have more in common with each other in terms of economic history, settlement patters etc. than they do with say a Des Moines or a KC, which were never as reliant on heavy industries like automobile manufacturing or steel production.
To build on the previous comment, it is not a coincidence that 5/6 of these examples are state capitols, and 3/6 have the largest state universities. These recipients of public spending are always going to out-perform the rest of the state in a downturn, or in the case of some of these states, a protracted, slow decline.
What is happening is that the energy and talent from too many of these states is being concentrated in the capitol and government sector, with too little of that talent making new companies and industries. That dynamic can become self-reinforcing, as the state capitol region starts to dominate the political climate.
In the cases of Des Moines, Indy and MSP, the capitol areas have been the largest industrial center for some time. But I am concerned for Wisconsin and Ohio, where the traditional industrial/commericial hubs are in decline and only the capitol area is healthy. That bodes badly for their futures.
Kudos for Kansas City, however! Its success is good both itself and for Missouri.
Add two bits of information. Look at county population gain-loss maps of these states and talk to some people who live there. These metros are collecting the young people of the state as agriculture-related employment continues to decline.
The rural areas have lots of married-couple families, with stable farm-related incomes. They have more than two kids, give them a work ethic and good primary education. Many get a degree and head for the closest city. That’s good for the city. Not so good for the small towns they leave, but they’ve gotten use to it over the last century.
I would like to second the comments of derfderf and Anon4, with respect to Columbus. My impression, with no hard data to back it up:
1) 20somethings have little ability to obtain a job (holding the prospect for career advancement) in many other areas of Ohio; from small, 50,000 pop. towns on up. Many have left (their towns, not the state); this also reduced the dating pool, encouraging others to follow. Don’t underestimate this effect of the dating pool on incentives to leave. The young are abandoning their hometowns, for good reason.
2) They don’t necessarily move to Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnatti (to say nothing of Akron, Dayton, etc.) in equal ratios. By and large, 20somethings move to Columbus. Cleveland (my favorite, of the three) is hurting.
3) Large amounts of state monies have gone to public highways, etc. in Columbus and the surrounding areas (e.g. beginning with Polaris, back in the day). Much, much more (or, so it seems) than has gone to 50k-100k towns.
Ohio seems to have placed its bet on Columbus. I’m not sure whether its growth or vibrancy is a bellwether for the state; or a simple indication that it is bleeding the best from the rest.
Thank you for the comments. I previously developed something I call the “Urbanophile Conjecture”, which is that if you want to be a successful Midwest city, it helps to be a state capital with more than 500,000 in your metro area. KC is an exception here.
I think there are a number of things about this that might account for it, but I’m not sure government jobs or money are the answer. Large cities tend to be cash cows for their state, for one thing. The city of Indianapolis alone sends $400M more to the state every year than it gets back, despite those government jobs.
One of my theories is that state capitals are constantly drawing in legislators, tourists, lobbyists, etc from all over the state. This gives them a more fluid corps of “power players” and thus their social structures and leadership class don’t calcify. Also, the state capital tends to have the elite lawyers, the newspaper of record, etc.
However, it might also be noted that none of these cities are geographically constrained. MSP and KC are on major rivers, but ones that are comparatively easy to bridge, thus they haven’t suffered unbalanced development. St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, etc were all on major barriers, as is Chicago, which despite its impressive core boom has weak aggregate statistics as a metro area.
Also, none of these cities were nearly the heavy industrial centers that places like Cleveland, Detroit, or Pittsburgh were, along with tons of small manufacturing towns that basically existed for the local GM plant.
Ed Glaeser says you can explain everything about a cold weather city by looking at historic college degree attainment as of 1940-1960. I don’t have the current data, but you could easily pull it from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Any or all of these could have played a role.
Indianapolis does have a very high student population and the state’s largest university campus. IUPUI has a mix of Purdue and IU programs, including IU’s Art/design school as well as Law, Med, and Public/Environmental Affairs schools. Ivy Tech, the state’s community college, has about 20,000 Indianapolis students. Indianapolis is also home to a now-prominent Division I school, Butler.
I would add to Aaron’s comment two ideas: Des Moines, Indy, and MSP are the largest metro in their respective states. (Aaron has written elsewhere that MSP has a huge share of Minnesota’s residents and GDP.)
With the significant place of health care in the US economy, leadership in that realm is an important position for any major city. Indianapolis is that city in Indiana.
Finally, much has been written about the long-term sports-convention strategy of Indianapolis.
The combination of state capital, major university, med center, and sports-convention emphasis (along with job-friendly city and state policy) looks to be a good combination for re-invention and growth in a former manufacturing city like Indy.
IU-Bloomington & Purdue-West Lafayette are the two largest campuses in Indiana. Both have about 40,000 students. IUPUI has about 30,000, it’s giant distinction being that it is home to the IU School of Medicine, the only medical school in the state.
Glad to hear my hometown of Columbus Ohio is thriving, and supportive of the LGBT community as well!
Good article. I really like Indianapolis – nice city, nice people. Freddy
Des Monies is a great place and I hope it doesn’t become too popular and touristy or it might loose its uniqueness. Ornela from payday loans
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I grew up in Indianapolis and now do live in Fishers! It’s a great area to live and raise a family. What Indy lacks in flair, it more than makes up for in convenience, affordability, and accessibility. And being so close to other major cities is a huge bonus too!
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What is happening is that the energy and talent from too many of these states is being concentrated in the capitol and government sector, with too little of that talent making new premium wp companies and industries. That dynamic can become self-reinforcing, as the state capitol region starts to dominate the political climate.
In the cases of Des Moines, Indy and MSP, the capitol areas have been the largest industrial center for some time. But I am concerned for Wisconsin and Ohio, where the traditional industrial/commericial hubs are in decline and only the capitol area is healthy. That bodes badly for their futures.
I think there are plenty of places in the Midwest that have potential. The fact that they have been repressed actually can work in their favor in a lot of ways. Let’s not forget that the Midwest has a ton of hard working people. moving pods. Cheers.
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