Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Urban revival in the Midwest: What does it mean for freedom?
Urban revival in the Midwest: What does it mean for freedom?
Apr 4, 2025 12:49 PM

We’ve long heard about the incessant flow of America’s best and brainiest to the country’s largest urban centers. As such cities continue to rise in population and prominence—from Los Angeles and San Francisco to New York City, Boston, and Washington, D.C.—fears continue to loom about the power of “coastal elites” and the future of America’s “middle.”

Those concerns have merit, of course. For although we see plenty of benefits from a density of smarts, skills, and capital, we also see plenty of risks, from the centralization of power to the diminishment of national diversity—economic, political, cultural, institutional, and otherwise.

Given a recent shift, however, those concerns may over-stated. According to Joel Kotkin, the migration to America’s biggest cities appears to be slowing, with many Americans shifting their movement to a series of mid-sized metros across the Midwest. Indeed, the fastest-growing cities in the Midwest are not what you’d expect, including places such as Kansas City, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Grand Rapids, and Des Moines.

“America’s high-priced ‘superstar’ cities are not about to be supplanted soon by eback towns,” Kotkin writes. “Butthe demographic evidenceprovides ample proof of shifting momentum since 2010. New York City’s population growth, impressive earlier in this decade, now ranks among the lowest in the nation. Brooklyn, the reinvented hipster capital, last year suffered its first population decline since 2006.”

Not only are those Midwestern cities growing, Kotkin explains, but the populations are most ing directly from those bigger hubs:

The burgeoning populations in places like Des Moines, which grew by 1.76 percent last year, is being driven by domestic out-migration from the superstar cities. In 2017, nearly three times as many domestic migrants escaped New York as in 2011. Chicago, Los Angeles, and even San Francisco and San Jose also have experienced sharp rises in domestic out-migration. The biggest percentage declines were found in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and, remarkably, San Jose, which was worst among the 53 metropolitan areas with a population of more than 1 million. Even the “boomtown” San Francisco metropolitan area, which had been attracting domestic migrants from 2010 through 2015, last year experienced a considerably higher rate of out-migration than even Rust Belt hard cases like Detroit, Buffalo, or Cleveland.

The coasts’ loss ended up, to some extent, as Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Des Moines, and Columbus’ gains, reflecting a growing flight from what are increasingly gated cities, affordable only to the affluent, the subsidized (students), and those older residents who bought when the buying was good.

As for the reasons behind such a shift, Kotkin offers a range of possibilities, from high housing costs (“sometimes three times higher adjusted for pared to the rising Midwest cities”) to a stagnant (or shrinking) pool of opportunities and prospects.

Further, the Midwest also includes a range of eback cities,” from Detroit to St. Louis to Cleveland. Although they don’t currently top the list for population growth, they hold plenty of promise for future growth and opportunity. “Increasingly, for many millennials, the eback cities, albeit perhaps less glamorous, seem places where aspirations can meet reality,” Kotkin writes.

The aspirational bit is important, demonstrating certain degrees of wisdom, independence, self-awareness and initiative among a generation that is often ridiculed for its short-sightedness. But beyond the promise these cities hold for individual workers and familis, we shouldn’t forget the value their growth portends for the nation and culture as a whole.

Kotkin references Alexis de Tocqueville, who, in his travels to America in the 19th century, observed that much of America’s strength came from the depth, diversity, and, more notably, the dispersionor distributionof its townships and urban centers. “The intelligence as well as the power of the country are dispersed,” he wrote in Democracy in America. “Instead of radiating from a point, they cross each other in every direction; the Americans have established no central control over the expression of opinion, any more than over the conduct of business.”

For Tocqueville, America’s power, freedom, and virtues came first from its diversity of townships and cities, geographically, culturally, and otherwise. As he wrote in Democracy in America:

In America…it may be said that the township was organized before the county, the county before the State, the State before the Union…The independence of the township was the nucleus round which the local interests, passions, rights, and duties collected and clung. It gave scope to the activity of a real political life most thoroughly democratic and republican…

Local assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of free nations. Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it. A nation may establish a system of free government, but without the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of liberty. The transient passions and the interests of an hour, or the chance of circumstances, may have created the external forms of independence; but the despotic tendency which has been repelled will, sooner or later, inevitably reappear on the surface.

The list of fast-growing Midwestern metros is far from a series of quaint 19th-century townships; nevertheless, their growth bodes well for the country at large.

We may or may not be witnessing a profound revival of urban “dispersion” in our own present day. But wherever and whenever it occurs, we not only see new promise for old cities and and a rising generation—lower costs, better quality of life, more opportunities, and so on. We see the enduring promise of a free prised of free people.

Image: skeeze, CC0 Creative Commons

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Submerged subsidiarity
Because too much has already been said about the recent gulf hurricanes, I won’t put in my two cents. I will, however, direct the reader to the most insightful take on this situation that I have yet to stumble across. As you read it, think again about the importance of the definitions of the words we use, such as ‘responsibility’ and ‘authority’ as are discussed in the mentioned article. ...
Spendthrift republicans
A wonderful piece by Deroy Murdock today on NRO. Though most fiscal conservatives understandably vote Republican, the record substantiates the theory that spending is less responsible when Congress is dominated by one party—either party—than when each party has enough votes to frustrate the other. Others have drawn attention to the problem of Republican pork, but Murdock does so in an especially devastating way. ...
Questions about the Red Cross
The Remedy, the Claremont Institute‘s blog, links to an article in the Los Angeles Times by Richard M. Walden, head of Operation USA, that raises concerns about how the Red Cross spends the money it receives for specific disasters. Walden levels some important and serious charges against the Red Cross, and may or may not be convincing depending on if you approve of the Red Cross’ fund-raising precedents and other activities. But Walden is undeniably right is when he raises...
Journalism professor calls for Helter Skelter
In 1969 Charles Manson and his gang set out to ignite a race war that pitted the wealthy white establishment against underprivileged blacks. The apocalyptic battle would be called “Helter Skelter,” after the Beatles’ song written by Paul McCartney. The white Manson reasoned that America’s angry black population would eventually win this war; at which time he and his group would emerge from their Mojave Desert hideout to assume leadership over what he perceived to be an inferior race. es...
Fab labbing, Fu-Fu, and the ovine entrepreneur
The BBC reports today a great illustration of human creativity and the intersection of technology and subsidiarity. MIT has set up what they called Fab Labs (Fabrication Labs) in what many might consider the least likely places for technological invention. These Labs consist of basic tools and software than enable people in sometimes remote and rural locations to invent and fabricate the technology they need in their daily work. MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld: In a world of Fab Labs, you...
Breathing with one lung?
Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Vienna and Austria, the Russian Orthodox Church’s representative to the European Union, is once again urging a Roman Catholic-Orthodox alliance bat secularism, liberalism and relativism in Europe — and lands outside it. “The social and ethical teachings of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are extremely close, in many cases practically identical,” Bishop Hilarion said. “Why, then, should we not be able to reveal our unity on all these major issues urbi et orbi?” Since the election...
CAFTA, prudence, and volleyball
After receiving some responses to a previous post (CAFTA/Culture of Life: Enemies?), I thought I would post the the exchange with my most recent dissatisfied critic. Here’s to volleying! (I have edited the emails for confidentiality.) Mr. Phelps, It was with great interest that I recently read your blog entry “CAFTA/Culture of Life: Enemies?” as for some strange reason it recently appeared on the Google Alerts. I found it amusing how you worked John Paul’s teachings in without actually quoting...
The right pass at the right time
If you haven’t heard of this story yet, read about what Notre Dame head football coach Charlie Weis did this past weekend. His expression passion for a dying boy, 10-year-old Montana Mazurkiewicz, transcends sports. Weis honored a promise to Montana despite the fact that he is a first-year coach in the big business of college football, in what might be the most scrutinized and storied programs in the country. In a personal visit to the boy last week, in addition...
Hurricane relief – Small organizations to the rescue
In the wake of overwhelming need of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, thankfully a number of us are voicing irritation with the inquiry, “How important do you think that faith-based organizations are to helping people”? Before ANY organization — government agency of any kind or national nonprofit — made a move, faith organizations had already moved. In San Antonio, where several Russian students were among New Orleans evacuees, Victory Fellowship, a faith-based, privately funded substance abuse treatment program, simply did the...
The nose of a camel: The federal government and education
Federal involvement in education has grown steadily throughout the nation’s history, encroaching on what is still viewed by American’s as mostly a state and local responsibility. Kevin Schmiesing looks at a new book that examines U.S. education policy, the red tape and bureaucracy that has resulted, and the opposition to federal control that arose from parochial school administrators. Read the full text here. ...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved