But these, too, attract outsized attention, especially in the caricatures of the Rust Belt embraced by people who do not live there. Reality: South Bend, like its peer cities, does have its share of abandoned factories. Myth: A falling population necessarily means good jobs are disappearing. If there's a single culprit for South Bend's population losses and vacant homes (and of course there isn't just one), Molnar says, it's " suburbanization, not Studebaker." This inability to capture suburban growth, more so than deindustrialization, led to South Bend losing thousands of residents. As Molnar writes:įrom 1960 through 2000, South Bend captured just 6% of household growth in the county. This is a commonly overlooked story in the Rust Belt, because if you don't pull apart the components of growth and internal migration, you don't easily see it. And not only are many of its suburbs home to the region’s most well-to-do residents, a large number of those residents work in the city of South Bend. Reality: South Bend, the city, has shrunk since 1960, but metropolitan South Bend, the region, has grown. Myth: The story of the Rust Belt is a story of uniform decline. It dispels some common myths, among them the following: It's relevant even beyond South Bend and places a lot like it. We've been enjoying Molnar's work this year, and we wanted to draw it to the attention of the broader Strong Towns audience. Joseph Molnar is the author of the article and podcast series More People-you can click that link to read the whole, seven-part written series and find podcast episodes on your platform of choice. One South Bend resident-and Strong Towns member-is tired of seeing his city painted with a broad brush, and he has written an excellent mythbusting series that digs deep into South Bend's postwar demographic history to examine what really happened to the city-and what didn't. ![]() The real history, though, is a fair bit more complex than that. There's something almost perversely romantic that attracts people not from the region to viewing a place like South Bend as a relic of bygone times, done in, no doubt, by the closure of the iconic Studebaker car company and the other economic losses that followed. Behind them they left a legacy of shuttered storefronts and neighborhoods dotted with vacant homes.right? Older residents retired to the warmer climes and friendlier tax regimes of the booming Sunbelt states. Industrial jobs moved overseas or were automated, factories closed, economic opportunity shrank, and people moved away from the region. ![]() A Dayton or Akron, Ohio an Erie, Pennsylvania a Flint, Michigan or perhaps South Bend, Indiana? You know the history, right? We all do.
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