How Physical, Cultural and Political Differences Shape Development and Economic Growth
I was recently asked to make a comparison living in New England versus the Midwest-specifically how cultural and political differences impact the economic and physical development framework of the two regions. This is something that I have at least a modest knowledge of, given that I have lived and worked in both areas (Born and raised in Hamden, CT near New Haven, attended college near Boston and now live near Columbus, OH). As a real estate developer and planner specifically I have paid quite a bit of attention to these differences.
I moved to Columbus from Connecticut nearly 15 years ago to attend grad school. I must admit the cultural differences between these two areas were a bit surprising at first. The basic differences were obvious-different land development patterns, different industries and even different landscapes. However, after living in Ohio for several years, I came to understand on a personal level the cultural and political differences and how they have -and continue to- shape and form these regions.
Regional Differences
These differences show up in subtle ways that are also telling. In New England, my experience was that residents have a much more territorial, parochial view of their communities, and are more likely to resist change and development. In contrast, in many Midwest metro areas the residents have a more metro-focused view of their region, and better understand how the different communities interact. This does not mean that they always cooperate, but by nature some of the governmental functions are already done on a regional basis, making it easier to collaborate on certain tasks and be more open to change.
It’s perhaps deceptively simple, yet revealing, to pick a typical resident in a community in each area, ask them a simple question, and read into their response. Let’s pick two fairly standard metro area cities – Hilliard, OH and Attleboro, MA – and compare them on several levels. First some background information.
Hilliard is a suburb about 10 miles northeast of Columbus that was founded as its own small railroad community in the mid 1800’s. It had less than 1,000 people until the 1960’s, when it began to grow exponentially with the construction of the I-270 outerbelt around Columbus. Today it is a middle to upper-middle income community of about 28,000 residents sandwiched between Columbus, other suburban communities and the rural farm fields of western Franklin County.
Attleboro, MA is a city about 10 miles northeast of Providence, just over the border into Massachusetts, and 30 miles southwest of Boston. It was founded in the late 1600’s and steadily grew in population to the nearly 45,000 people it has today, but was a community of about 25,000 people in 1950 prior to the time when it would have been absorbed into the larger metroplex. It is now part of the Providence Metropolitan area, located right on I-95 between Boston and Providence, and is also linked to the two via the MBTA Boston-Providence commuter line. It was once known as the “Jewelry Capital of the World” due to the presence of several jewelry manufacturers in the city in the early 1900’s. Today Attleboro has transitioned from a manufacturing-dominant self-contained city into a quasi-suburban middle income community that has melded into the surrounding metropolis.
Now that we have a background on the two communities, let’s pose our simple question from someone unfamiliar with these areas-“Where are you from?” The answers each give would be subtly different, but telling in how they view their community and its relationship to the surrounding region. From my personal experience, here’s how each resident would answer this question:
Hilliard: “I’m from Columbus Ohio.”
Attleboro: “I’m from Attleboro, MA.” (Sometimes, they will abdicate this and say “I’m from Massachusetts”, but that’s just for convenience so they don’t need to go into a lengthy description of where Attleboro is).
The differing level of detail reveals not only how they view their community, but allows us to look at where these views come from. Clearly the Hilliard resident considers him/herself more a part of the metropolitan area. The Attleboro resident sees him/herself as a resident of the town first, and then the State, with no mention of the metro area.
Why would this be? There are several physical, cultural and political factors that play a role:
1. Municipal Borders. Municipal borders in New England were fixed long ago, well before metro areas became the main economic unit. In much of the rest of the country, including the Columbus area, communities continue to change their boundaries through annexation (more on the legal aspects of this in a moment). The borders of New England cities and towns were fixed hundreds of years ago and have rarely changed since.
2. Proximity of Metro Areas. New England has numerous small (except Boston) metros that bump up against one another. As a result, you get an agglomeration of established communities that sit between metro areas. In the Midwest, communities are spread farther apart. In Ohio, a state with several metro areas, many counties still have a modest sized county seat and a few villages. There is still quite a bit of country between many of the metro areas, and the spacing gets farther as you go west into other states.
In our example, it’s pretty clear that Hilliard would still be a small village of less than 1,000 people if Columbus hadn’t sprawled out to meet it and envelop it within its metro footprint. Many residents probably work in Columbus, and the ones that don’t work in one of the other suburban communities that owe their growth to Columbus, just as Hilliard does. When residents want a night out on the town, Columbus is the only game in town without a long trip.
Attleboro is a different case. It was a small city in its own right before it ever became part of a larger metro area. It sits 10 miles from Providence and 30 from Boston, and probably has many residents that work in both cities, plus in several other suburbs in the area that have the same fractured allegiance to multiple metros. Cultural opportunities abound in both cities, which can result in many visits to both.
3. Small Box Government. Although both regions tend to have a “small-box” governmental structure, it is actually far stronger in New England than in the Midwest. This is codified in the governmental structure of the areas in numerous ways:
a. First, New England “towns” are essentially the equivalent of “townships” in other parts of the country. However, there are significant differences. In Ohio, townships are considered semi-autonomous extensions of the County government. They are not incorporated as their own municipalities. They are run by their own elected officials, but have only limited powers as delegated to them by the Ohio Constitution. In legal-speak, they are not full “home rule” governmental entities. For example, townships can have zoning (if they jump through certain hoops), but they cannot approve subdivisions-that’s a County function. Incorporated municipalities in Ohio are full home-rule entities.
New England towns are also not incorporated. However, this is a virtually meaningless designation. They do have home rule, and function in virtually every way just like an incorporated city. They cannot be annexed by a city. A friend of mine that’s heavily involved in my home town’s local government once said to me, “we looked into incorporating ourselves as a city, but it didn’t mean much and required us to pay higher fees to the State.”
b. Speaking of counties, New England has a fractured form of county government. Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont do not have any county governments, only lines on a map. Massachusetts has abolished some counties, while some having merged and other still function independently. Only New Hampshire and Maine have what appear to be fully operational county governments. In areas without counties, each town or city provides most of its own services. For example, in Connecticut, each town has its own elected clerk that just handles document recordation in that town. Only services that absolutely can’t be run on a local level are done regionally, such as the judicial system-however this is run by the State via districts that roughly correspond to the county boundaries.
In the Columbus area, each county has a robust governmental structure that provides a number of services that are more easily provided on a regional level, such as courts, auditor and recorder and Sherriff services. In Indiana, their Unigov system merged the City of Indianapolis and Marion County to even further expand the box.
c. In Ohio, Townships can also lose land to municipalities that swallow up territory through annexation. The City of Columbus essentially controlled development in Central Ohio for 50 years through buying up the water and sewer systems and only agreeing to provide service to developers if they annexed to the City or a suburb with which the City had an agreement in place. This was a “big box” approach that was put in place in the 1950’s, and has worked well for Columbus over the years. In New England, the borders were fixed a few hundred years ago, and they don’t change-only “small boxes” available.
4. Population Density. New England is more crowded already than many other parts of the country. This furthers resistance to new developments, resulting in higher real estate prices. This, along with the lack of economic activity that would draw many new residents to the area, means that-outside of Boston- many New Englanders were born and raised there. Not much fresh blood to re-think the way things are done.
5. Local Taxation. The manner in which local taxes were levied in Connecticut is very different than in Ohio. In Ohio, income tax (charged where you work, not live) funds much of the local revenue for cities and townships, with property taxes going to fund school districts which are operated as separate governmental subdivisions. In Connecticut, property taxes support most of the local level spending, so property value is king. In a majority (although not all) of the communities the school district is only semi-autonomous and is funded directly as a line item in the municipal budget.
The impact of this is actually quite dramatic. In Ohio it pays to cram as many jobs as you can into your community. Many communities welcome every office, strip mall and warehouse they can get. In Connecticut, many people tend to react the opposite way-they don’t want these uses. They bring traffic and pollution, which can bring property values down (at least that’s the fear), thereby weakening the municipal coffers. Exclusivity pays when keeping out more intense uses to preserve the bucolic countryside atmosphere leads to wealthy residents building large estates that pay lots of taxes. There is likewise much less of an incentive for local leaders to welcome the newest strip mall into their community, especially when they need to provide more police services and bigger roads. In Ohio, almost every highway exit, even the ones in high-end communities, has several commercial establishments near them. In Connecticut, many exit onto leafy drives that run to quiet residential areas.
6. Terrain. Physical landscape plays a role-if you get 20 feet off the ground in Hilliard, the Columbus skyline is in full view, due to the flat terrain. I guess that it would take a much higher point to be able to see Providence from Attleboro, given the rolling terrain. Out of sight-out of mind.
7. History New England has a very rich history. Pilgrims, founding fathers, settlement in the 1600’s, historic town centers, fishing villages, former industrial powerhouses, Ivy League universities — all of these things contribute to a culture where the past is revered. Here in Columbus, people’s self-worth is in the future. It’s a young, relatively anonymous, but up-and-coming city. It has a history, but most people don’t hang their self-identity hat on it (in fact, I would argue that there is an unhealthy self-angst about Columbus’ past by its residents). Many other Midwest metros also have a slightly older history characterized by the manufacturing boom in the early 20th century-which is still within the memory of many of its residents, and so doesn’t hold the gravitas of New England’s founding fathers.
We can now go back and look at why our two residents answered our question the way they did in the context of the above differences. The Attleboro resident answer Attleboro for two overarching reasons-1) they have more than one metro area with which to identify and 2) the historic, political and physical geography of the area fosters an overreliance on the city/town as the dominant cultural, also about fashion culture and fashion dress designer, like LilyBridal,instyledress. political and social institution in the region. The Hilliard resident answered Columbus for exactly the opposite reasons-1) Hilliard clearly falls within only the Columbus metro area and 2) there is no dominant physical and cultural reason, and much weaker political reasons, to answer Hilliard to someone else.
Cumulative Effect on Regional Culture
The cumulative result of these cultural, physical and political structures is a significantly different approach to development, both physical and economic. New England has a much stronger resistance to change. Why would a community that prides itself on its historic past want to demolish some of it to build new, modern facilities? They don’t. Even in Boston, the economic powerhouse of the region, many people still deride the skyline as “turning Boston into New York”. Their true pride is placed in the Back Bay, North End, the Commons, Southie, etc.
This also extends to greenfield development. While many areas have residents that resist change, New Englanders have a particularly powerful argument-the history of place. After all, the heritage of the area is small, dense nodes with pastoral, rolling hills in between. A colonial-style home on a 10-acre exurban lot preserves much of that look. A relatively dense subdivision of 4 units an acre does not. Local officials tend to listen to this argument more in New England than in other parts of the country, because their self-worth is strongly tied to their history and their tax base to property values.
Even in a loss, the impact on the local psyche is not as significant. When UPS moved their offices out of southwest Connecticut in the early 90’s, no one felt like the true character of the region was threatened. Sure, jobs were lost, and that was hard, but it didn’t make the region any less proud of itself. Contrast that to many Midwest metros, who keep a scorecard of Fortune 500 companies in their pocket to show outsiders, and who feel real reputational angst whenever a company leaves.
Furthermore, the “small box” view tends to stifle larger economic development goals that would be beneficial to the region as a whole. Today it’s virtually impossible to get an even modest expansion of the obsolete Tweed-New Haven airport, for example, even though it sits in the middle of one of the largest underserved air markets in the nation. It straddles the border of two municipalities that fight over it incessantly (to be fair it is near a number of single-family neighborhoods). Meanwhile many Midwest cities have actively expanded their airports to nurture these crucial links to the external economy.
Without new greenfield development and modern buildings, airports and other facilities, it can be difficult to attract new companies to the area. The communities in New England that do have a number of these newer facilities (such as those off of the fabled Route 128 near Boston) often have them because their sense of history was ripped apart by the momentary fervor for building interstate highways in the area-one which has faded in New England but which still runs strong in the Midwest. Midwestern cities still develop scads of suburban office buildings and shopping centers-often too many- while the relative dearth of development in New England results in some markets being highly overpriced relative to other areas of the country. Surprisingly, although Boston has a very dense core, the area around the I-495 outerbelt (one of the largest outerbelts in the nation) is only very thinly developed in many areas.
Beyond the development aspect, New England has a regional mindset that is from my experiences fairly unique. In some ways the Northeast, with New England as a part of that area, is worldly-a gateway to America, home to several large world-class cities, a history of immigration and a density that make this region feel busy, prosperous and cosmopolitan. It often sets trends that the rest of the world follows.
On the other hand, it is also a region of small boxes, one that lives in the past as much as the future and one that resists change fairly aggressively. The view is not forward-looking in many cases. It’s somewhat inward-looking. The identities are fragmented and parochial. The bottom line is that outside of a few business cluster locations like Cambridge or Wall Street, or a few high-society locations like the Hamptons or Greenwich, the Northeast doesn’t want to necessarily be a trend-setter, even though it often is. It’s not that interested in climbing the ladder to “world class” or the “big time”- partly because it thinks it’s already there, but partly because it would have to sacrifice part of its identity. It’s just fine with its leaf-strewn rolling hills, historic downtowns, fairly moribund economic performance and proximity to world-class New York and Boston.
As a final note-it may sound that I am bashing this mindset. I don’t necessarily think it’s all bad. I do believe that New England could do more to promote more job growth and think regionally about its future. Some forward, big box thinking here would be welcome. On the other hand, not many places in America have the rich history and scenic beauty that New England has, and this is exactly the kind of “authentic brand” of which Aaron Renn has spoken so often of late. Indeed, tourism has become a big part of the New England economy over time as many people recognize this brand and want to experience it for themselves. Artists, authors and creative types, at least the highly successful ones that can afford it, tend to flock to the area to live and work in relative seclusion and anonymity. This lifestyle, in my opinion, should be preserved and nurtured in a nation where so many places do seem like every other place.
An interesting and thoughtful comparison, with no real evidence of regional chauvinism. I think it’s somewhat ironic that Mr. Mattei has used Ohio as his proxy for the Midwest. It’s understandable–he lives there–but, by most metrics, Ohio is less characterized by his fundamental arguments than most of the rest of the Midwest. For example, the distance between metro areas may be greater in Ohio than they are in Massachusetts or Connecticut, but most other Midwesterners who pass through Ohio note that there seem to be fairly large cities all over the place. Driving from Cleveland to Cincinnati through Columbus, you could easily be in a major metro every 45 minutes or so. It’s also the only Midwestern state that can stake some claim to Appalachia, its building stock is older than other states on average, and it’s the most densely populated state in the Midwest. Ohio’s geographic proximity to the Northeast and historic settlement patterns may seem like facile explanations, but they can’t be denied either. George’s argument still holds up wonderfully on its own merits, but imagine how much deeper the distinctions would be if he were in Indiana, Iowa, or Nebraska.
On the other hand, George controls somewhat for the density and age variables. He has picked the most-dense, oldest Northern state west of the Appalachians; Midwest Lite. And he found significant distinctions nonetheless.
One caveat: state policies on home rule and local taxation can significantly affect development trends and attitudes.
Indiana is not a home-rule state; Unigov made the Indianapolis City-County Council subordinate to the state legislature in regard to many aspects of the consolidation. Almost every aspect of Unigov is regulated by state laws that apply ONLY to “first class” or “consolidated” cities…a legal fiction that refers only to Indianapolis/Marion County and none of the other 91 counties and countless cities. Municipal home rule is only a dream in Indianapolis (and its four “excluded cities” not part of Unigov).
Thanks for the fascinating and comprehensive primer, George! Your piece is the first time I’ve ever heard the uniqueness of New England articulated in an overarching, comparative manner. I’d love to know what the literature on these subjects looks like.
Your analysis goes a long way towards teasing out the interrelationship between governmental structures and personal choices. I think it’s often ignored in discussions like these that people shape the government, which in turn shapes them, which they in turn shape, which shapes them further, and so on. So it was instructive to see you identify concrete structures in a coherent way but problematize causality. As you suggest, these structures slowly shift over time, and while boosters and innovators can’t revolutionize much all at once, pressure is applied bit by bit by many people until a region’s identity evolves.
I would be curious to see this kind of analysis applied to neighborhoods (and wards and districts and boroughs) within cities, to see how the nature of these subdivisions–and the institutions and forces within them–affects the way urbanites view their cities. For example, does someone living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan feel “on top of the world,” with Columbia, Times Square, Penn Station, and Wall St. all within a half-hour’s ride on the subway network, while someone in, say, a Houston suburb or North Philadelphia feels lightyears away even from nearby global institutions but feels a tight connection to their neighbors and local organizations? I don’t have any real examples here, but there must be enormous variation out there.
These questions of identity and place can be asked at the micro-level as well as the marco-level.
Very interesting. Some of this applies to NJ as well. NJ is the very definition of a home rule state with over 560 municipalities and 600 school districts. There is no unincorporated land in the state. Townships or cities tend to be small and plenty have under a 1,000 residents. because of everything being done by every individual town including schools and funded almost exclusively by property taxes, NJ has the highest property taxes in the nation.
No ones says they are from NY or Philly like the suburbs in those states because we can’t. We say NJ near such and such. NJ doesn’t try very hard to have good cities because we can get away with just coasting, living off of other states with good cities.
An excellent piece. As a Navy brat who mostly grew up near Boston and now lives in Dallas, I saw a lot of the points you make. There is a completely different sense of time and the past between the two cities: the house I lived in near Boston was built ~1900 and that was no big deal; when I bought an 18-year old house in Dallas, the realtor repeatedly called it “an older house”.
In New England, you rightly highlight that loyalty is usually to town; in OH, it is apparently to metro; in TX, it is famously to state, with metro second.
Thanks for writing this.
One detail, southern and western states don’t have townships at all. In Kentucky you live in a city OR a county. In Ohio in you live in a city AND and county. In Kentucky County govn’t so all local things and the state handles many more things that in northern or western states.
Do you want to travel 30 or 40 miles to record a deed, report a crime, attend court, or serve jury duty? Ohio does these things at the county level because the distances are too great to do them at regional levels.
Fantastic piece…as a student, this has provided a great deal of interesting information.
Thaks for the kind remarks.
Someone just pointed out to me a factual error-Hilliard is northwest of Columbus, not northeast. Don’t know how that snuck in…
Great piece and an interesting read, George. I also moved from the Northeast (not NE) to the Midwest (not Columbus). The places I’ve lived in bear some resemblance to the traits you described in New England and Columbus, but in other ways not so much.
I’m not sure that Columbus really constitutes a “typical” Midwest metro. When I think of a large city in the Midwest, I think of much older and more landlocked cities like St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee. Though only 100 miles from Columbus, Cincinnati has amazingly little in common with Columbus in terms of terrain, history, regional identity, local politics, and culture. You could really say the same about Cleveland.
I think this just proves what most of us probably already know – which is that even though “Northeast” and “Midwest” are very distinct regions within the US, these regions exhibit lots of variety from state to state and even metro to metro. The glue respectively binding northeasterners and midwesterners together is probably more cultural and political at a broader level than city or metro. A recent example comes to mind: when would you ever see a rural county in the heart of the Midwest vote democratic in a presidential election? Answer: almost never. When would you see this happen in the northeast? Answer: routinely.
Greg:
Yes I agree that the glue is more cultural and political at a broader level. I actually think that many of the things I mentioned above reflect that. I was trying to say that some of the outcome of how people think about where they live is generated from those cultural and political differences, so I don’t think we’re necessarily saying different things.
I also agree that different metros within these regions do have different forces at work. No one metro is the same, but I do think the cities in the Midwest share a common hertiage, as do those in the Northeast.
Very interesting and well written article. I work with cities throughout the US (and in particular in the Midwest) on economic revitalization and have often been struck by the distinct mindsets or personalities that seem to exist in different cities. I have been particularly struck by these differences when working with pairs of cities that would seem by an outsider to have nearly identical geographic, economic, and demographic characteristics (for example Winona vs Red Wing – both historic cities less than an hour apart on the Mississippi River in southeast Minnesota; Muncie and Anderson IN – both industrial cities approximately an hour NE of Indianapolis with signnficant population losses and econonomic challenges the last several decades; and Goshen and Elkhart IN – adjacent cities heavily dependent on the RV industry in the same county in north central Indiana). The personality differences between these different cities was usually evident on my first day in each City, and was validated in subsequent years of interaction.
Andrew makes an interesting comment regarding the interrelationship between governmental structures and personal choices, and people shaping government, which in turn shapes them. I have definitely seen this in action. The more dynamic cities seen to have higher quality and more highly motivated city officials and employees. These officials and employees in turn, tend to be more effective in revitalization efforts, which results in more attractive and livable cities, which in turns leads to more engaged residents. But I think these personaility differences are often overlooked in trying to figure out why one city is more effective than another. The root causes and historical origin of these personality differences also seem to be rarely recognized. This is another reason wht this article was excellent, in providing an in depth analysis of how these historical factors could be in play for some cities in the Midwest and New England.
George, I hope I didn’t sound overly critical. Very good points about small box govt, taxation, attitudes toward development, and density. I’ve noticed those same differences between the MW and Northeast, but have never been able to put it as eloquently as you did.
Of your seven listed factors, #1, #6, and #7 probably apply to Columbus and Indianapolis, but not as much to the majority of large MW cities. Generally speaking, Columbus and Indy are very different from their MW peer cities. I think that’s been talked about a lot on this blog. Most MW cities are very landlocked and quite old, though not nearly as old as NE towns. Sometimes that history contains a lot of baggage that makes it difficult for new ideas to take root and thrive. Columbus is really a much more progressive place, I think in part because most of that baggage does not exist.
Columbus was a late bloomer, during an era when annexation made more sense. Most MW metros lack the ability to easily annex or consolidate because the municipal boundaries were settled a century ago — when metro government was an idea that didn’t yet exist.
And to your point about most New Englanders from smaller cities being born and raised there and staying there, statistics show that this is also true of the vast majority of the Midwest. We lack the healthy population churn (incoming and outgoing) of a city like NY or Boston or DC.
In general, I think America’s older mid-sized cities have lots in common in terms of history and development patterns, no matter what part of the country we’re talking about. Governance and taxation are a very different matter, as you pointed out.
No I wasn’t concerned about you sounding critical at all. My comments were surely general and can be seen as a bit “stereotypical” in a sense. It’s like when you see a description about Millenials these days-sure as a group there may be some defining characteristics, but when you drill down to an individual, some of those characteristics may be different.
This is a fascinating article. Having gone the opposite direction form the author of the midwest to New England. I’ve said since I live here that this place exists more on its reputation than what actually happens today.
But while we may think we are different from every place else, the cost of doing business is actually driving us to be just like the rest of the country.
I live in West Hartford, a small town with a thriving town center. When we moved here eight years ago all the businesses in the center were small, unique stores. When we voted in a project to revamp and expand the center the rents immediately went up and now the only businesses which can afford to operate here are national chains.
So the things that make us “special” make us expensive which drive out the things that make us “special”.
This article was fascinating, well written and an excellent mini-case study by anecdote of the differences you list. You are also a sexy beast.