Bloomberg’s Justin Fox tweeted out a link to this piece from a professor in Peoria, Illinois who left a coveted tenure-track position because he couldn’t bear the thought of living there. Here’s an excerpt:
What this all boiled down to is that it was massively detrimental to my health and well-being to live in a dying Rust Belt city by myself. And my “solution” to that problem – moving to Chicago and driving seven hours round-trip to work – was never anything but a stopgap that negatively affected me in different ways.
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People have attempted to debate me on this – usually people living in Chapel Hill, Athens GA, Portland, Boston, California, Atlanta, and the like – and I have no desire to debate it any further, but I knew the second I visited for the interview that Peoria was going to be bad. Anyone who lectured me that it’s “not that bad” or whatever, all I can say is: knock yourself out. Move there. Move there by yourself at age 33, no kids and no spouse. Let me know how your mental health is after two or three years, and what your social life is like. There is nothing to do and nobody to do nothing with. Faculty who move there with a spouse or kids do alright. Faculty who do not tend to have a pretty rough time.
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There are dozens of medium-sized cities just like it and they are all the same. Everyone with the ability and wherewithal to leave leaves. You are left with people who can’t get out, are too old to leave, or both. The economy is dying and gets worse every year. Again, if you choose not to believe me on this point there’s nothing more I can say except, go give it a try. In the summer of 2012, that’s what I did.
Obviously this is just one very unhappy person. I’ve been to Peoria and thought it was a fine city. (Though, as this ex-prof would no doubt riposte, I never actually moved there). Justin tweeted some pictures of some of the city’s amenities, such as a cool looking bar and a coffee shop.
But nevertheless the anecdote about Peoria is backed up by some bleak data. The metro area’s population fell by 2.8% since 2010, and the rate of decline is accelerating. It’s lost 1.4% of its jobs since 2010. Even more worrisome is that it’s real per capita GDP has fallen by 9.3% since 2010.
There’s nothing uniquely bad about Peoria driving this. In fact, it has some major advantages, including being, until a recent move of its executive HQ to Chicago, home to Caterpillar. It also has Bradley University, the likely employer of the professor who left. And it’s relatively educated, at 30% college degree attainment.
So this city has a lot more going on than many other places. In fact, in my recent Manhattan Institute report on stagnant cities, Peoria didn’t meet the criteria for inclusion. Nevertheless, it is bears that “family resemblance” I alluded to that leaves it in a very challenging situation for the future. This is especially true because it is located in the state of Illinois, whose relatively high taxes vs. its neighbors, terrible finances, and dysfunctional governance are dragging down much of already challenged Downstate.
But even if the fiscal cloud lifted, places like Peoria just aren’t major talent draws in the 21st century. That badly hurts not just their ability to lure or create new business, but the ability of their existing businesses and institutions to attract the talent needed to compete in an ever more competitive world.
As Fox put it:
I think [the essay] says at least as much about the struggles of mid-sized metro areas as about the difficulties of academic life. Mid-sized metros (generally defined as 250K-999K population, but let’s not be sticklers) do seem to be making a little bit of a comeback. But especially in the Midwest, there are huge differences between the ones on the rise (Sioux Falls, Des Moines, Lincoln, Madison) and the ones that aren’t (Peoria, Toledo, Topeka, the Quad Cities). Peoria does have nice coffeehouses and restaurants with impressive liquor collections. But its economy is oriented around a big manufacturing company (Caterpillar) that is doing fine but is less moored to Peoria with each passing year, and there’s not a lot to attract young, educated people from elsewhere to town.
I’ll add some color commentary to what he said. Sioux Falls and Des Moines are the largest cities in their state. Des Moines is also the capital. Lincoln and Madison are home to their state’s flagship universities. These things make all the difference.
As I noted in my MI report, one of the big attributes of these stagnant and struggling areas is that they are asset light. Pretty much every city with its state’s flagship school is doing well. But even a single Fortune 500 HQ, as is de facto the case in Peoria, is often not enough to drive prosperity.
This isn’t about Peoria per se. It’s about changes in the macrostructure of the economy and society that have significantly disadvantaged a slew of places in America’s industrial heartland. These disadvantaged areas need specific focus and attention from policy makers.
Cover image by Robert Lawson, CC BY-SA 2.5
I lived in Peoria during the depths of the Reagan recession (1982-1984) (Yes…attending Bradley 🙂 ) I did find the City somewhat grim…seemed dirtier than my hometown, the hardly booming Fort Wayne. I think Fort Wayne is in a better place now, though. The economy is more diverse, downtown, while still scarred by HORRIBLE planning decisions, has pockets of life. Peoria did have pockets of impressiveness-almost all from Pre-WWII glory days (Moss Avenue!). But just felt listless to me.
Ed has been unhappy for awhile. Whether it is primarily the fault of Peoria is a question only he can answer. 🙂
I do wonder what the salary for this tenure track position was only for the fact that the planning positions (I interviewed for 2 in the area following attaining a masters in the mid 1990s) were salaries much lower than the annual equivalent of a base wage at CAT – even if there was “someone worth talking to” you are competing with not only CAT management but hourly that at an equivalent age probably has a house and toys you can only dream of as a entry-level planner.
So how do we explain Columbus, Indiana? Now down to one Fortune 500 HQ (or more precisely, about half, since the last two CEOs lived in Indy).
“Lincoln and Madison are home to their state’s flagship universities.” They are ALSO their states’ capitals.
I’ve visited Peoria and been to that bar in the picture, I liked it. With a college and a major corporation in town, it’s not like it’s completely devoid of young people to hang out with. I think this guy seems like an abnormally miserable person who doesn’t like being around normal Americans.
What percentage of college grads stay? If your whole social circle is moving to Chicago, you will too. For year, Tallahassee has had troubles with its image where only the slackers stay behind. It created an aggressive intern program to get seniors into responsible local internships before they flew the academic nest.
This underscores the need for regional cooperation and marketing, as Richard Longworth was advocating over a decade ago. Cities like Peoria might struggle to compete in the national and international marketplaces if they go it alone, but a “Central Illinois Experience”” marketing effort that included the collective assets and amenities of Bloomington, Champaign-Urbana, Springfield and Decatur (among others) is whole different story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Illinois
Many of these cities are about an hour apart. Travel between them probably takes less time than it takes me to get from the Chicago suburb where I live to the Loop.
(Note: I seem to recall there is or was an organization (or initiative) promoting Central Illinois but I couldn’t find it doing a quick online search)
Yes…this “Hexa?-Plex” is the diffuse Illinois version (and therefore much less effective and dynamic) of Indianapolis and Columbus.
Peoria is also a small city not mid-sized. City population is about 110,000 and metro population is about 370,000 which puts it more in the category of say Waco, TX rather than Des Moines, Madison, which are double that size, or Lincoln which is almost a part of the greater Omaha metro area and about 4-times larger the Peoria. Souix Falls is the only comparable sized city on your list but it is the regional center of the entire Dakotas so much more economically and culturally important. The next closest big city to Souix Falls is what…Minneapolis?
It’s not surprising that a small city like Peoria that is not any kind of regional center of government, education, or commerce is going to be a backwater.
In 1979, my last year at Stanford, I was living in an environmental theme house and got to know a guy from Kansas also living there. I asked him why he had left and he looked at me like I had asked the dumbest question in the world. His answer was something to the effect of, “There’s no reason to go back.” Palo Alto’s values have obviously gone up a lot faster than Kansas’ in the last 40 years, and that’s because of smart people like him staying.
The brightest story I know of in the Midwest is Grand Rapids, where a local foundation, mindful of supporting the next generation of civic entrepreneurs, has been giving planning grants to a young guy who is gradually getting local government to remove the semi-dike across the Grand River and restore the “rapids” to Grand Rapids. That will give people interested in white water canoeing and kayaking a place to go play, right in front of downtown. That’s not the Nantahela Outdoor Center, between Atlanta and Chattanooga, the country’s best center for this, but it’s a start, particularly in a region that has no particular competition to Boulder or the other outdoorsy tech centers.
For five years now, I’ve been working with the economic development director of Chapel Hill to develop themes and messaging to help that town realize its potential as one of the ten top R&D centers in the country. It really is an interesting, quirky place, but for 40 years now, they’ve let all the jobs and commercial real estate investment go down the highway to Research Triangle Park, and now they need that tax base and younger workers back to keep their government budgets balanced, as well as to stay on the leading edge for talent attraction. (The Bathroom Bill cost them at least two hot hires at UNC.) Chapel Hill isn’t Boulder, so it’s not going to attract mountain climbing researchers, so how else it might attract the 32-year-old female post doc who may be the next MacArthur scholar? ( I dated someone like that!) These questions have been very much on our minds, particularly when we think about the social needs of someone who has spent the last 15 or more years of their life in academia (first college, then masters, then PhD programs, then post doc fellowships),studying, writing theses and applying for grants, and not playing, meeting a mate, having children or buying a house These issues are just like those of the guy that said no to Peoria, who might just as well have said, “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” After 15 years or more of self denial, these people want to start living, and that means finding people like them and putting themselves in a fun and interesting community where they can be themselves without someone commenting on their marital status, why they haven’t had kids yet, are they gay, or what church they attend. For Chapel Hill, that comes down to beautifully tall trees, a sense of history and stone walls, and a society that is open, gracious and enjoys the art of good conversation. You don’t get things things in Boston/ Cambridge, and you may not find them in Berkeley, Austin, Boulder, Pittsburgh, or any other other academic/ tech centers of the U.S.
The point is that to compete, even when you are tops in the world as an academic and research center, you have to identify your best traits to the world so that “your people” can find you, the people who like just the way you are. (Apologies to Mr. Rogers.) A lot of these places like Peoria grew up as factory towns to assemble products like John Deere tractors. They offered good, solid middle class life for people who wanted to settle down and have a steady job. They can’t offer that any longer, because, for the most part, that factory work is no longer steady unless you are a highly trained technician who can repair and maintain machinery, program it, and write up a coherent job report for the technician coming on the next shift. I know people who have moved to small, Dorothy-like places in the midwest, but they were running independent ventures that they could run anywhere, and they were at a time in their life where they wanted to settle down and drive to their children’s soccer games. To reliably attract highly educated, specialized workers, though, you have to have to be selling more than an interchangeable product; you need to be something special.
And I think that closing sentence is how we explain Columbus Indiana.
J. Irwin Miller of Cummins and Irwin Union Bank understood it decades ago and helped to build a small city of architectural distinction.
As a child there I attended schools designed by Harry Weese and John Johansen, rode the school bus past a Robert Venturi fire station, picked out books from an IM Pei library, and took my savings passbook to a bank designed by Eero Saarinen.
I am not sure any of it played in my dad’s decision to move his young family there, but it gave me a lifelong appreciation of modern architecture. It’s part of what drew me back to Indiana as an adult.
This is THE dilemma for me and academics i know best. Some academics don’t care about having a social/personal life. Others have one that follows them wherever they go. But those who want to develop a personal and professional life at the same time have to organize their lives very carefully. I’m an historian who’s settled for an “educator faculty” job in which I have to teach whatever and whenever I’m asked too, so research faculty can conduct their long research trips and ‘writing sabbaticals. I”m not even eligible for internal research support, but I don’t mind. I can still do research on my own dime, even if it must proceed more slowly. I particularly like teaching, too. I took this position because I knew I couldn’t put my personal life on hold for years while I devoted myself entirely to work in Waco, Bismark, or Jonesboro, AR.
The others academics I know best have never expected that they could combine both work and personal lives in the same place. They focused on getting jobs within a certain radius of cities in which they could envision making a social life for themselves. Each took a job within a 3 -hour drive of one of their chosen cities. Then, each got an apartment or arranged a lease with someone looking for a housemate in that city and spend their longer weekends, breaks, and summers staying at their apartment or house share, doing as much as half of their academic work from their urban pied-a-terre. In between, they use social media and apps to foster social connections in that city and to sustain the social connections they’ve made in that city in person. One did this in Chicago, one In Austin, and one in Columbus, Ohio. One stays in a cheap motel in Dayton, OH during the week so he can a enjoy a nice apartment in Columbus. He’s there about half the nights of the year. He’s certainly had some colorful stories to tell about the goings on at the motel! Technology made this all much easier than it would have been even a decade ago. Each was quite open about their arrangements and it was not an issue with their higher ups…in fact their supervisors understood and took it as a sign of how much they were willing to do to get and keep that job.
ALL of this commentary focuses upon what (Peoria) my hometown isn’t or lacks. In all honesty, our worst flaw is pervasive insecurity and general negativity. So overt and problematic has this become that several local citizens from a broad and diverse spectrum have launced a growing initiative that focuses upon our region’s positives. Imo, Caterpillar Inc.’ s scrapped new global headquarters and subsequent relocation was ‘ a blessing in disguise ‘ . Why? Because it forced our community to not only accept it and move on. But, to at last focus upon the ever-growing Healthcare sector that had already surpassed regional Manufacturing sector.
Peoria-based ‘ OSF Healthcare ‘ is not only one of Peoria’s largest employers. It’s also one the State of Illinois and arguably our region’s most innovative. It’s administration delightfully announced a concerted headquarters relocation, in January 2018, with CAT’s assistance to a historic downtown landmark building that it will occupy in Late 2020. It’s planned move, that has since grown in scale and scope even before construction began, will infuse 1200 to 1300 highly-skilled and well-paid professionals into our Central Business District that has suffered from prior ‘ Big Yellow ‘ downsizing. Also OSF is one of a consortium several key innovative civic players poised to establish a ‘ Peoria Innovation Hub ‘ that through public/private collaboration will help foster and nurture a diverse range of innovation and startups.
Our larger companies and institutions gain headlines that overshadow our growing tech industry and innovation companies (ex: Maui Jim, Bump Boxes, AutonomouStuff, VirtuSense Technologies, Natural Fiber Welding, TADA Cognitive Solutions, River City Labs makerspace, Turner Center for Entrepreneurship @ Bradley University, Etc). However, because these aren’t located within a ‘ big city ‘ region, they often don’t recieve high-profile recognition.
Peoria, in many ways, deserved much criticism for civic stagnation and misplaced focus. But, Thanks be to God, our community’s finally obtained it. Somewhat because it has to, no different than countless other industrial cities. In fairness, it’s easy for outsiders taking fleeting observations not to realize challenging factors (ex: recurrent city budgetary crises and related staff cuts from declining revenue, racial disparity, troubled public school system, etc.) working against it. Regardless, local advocates realize that our greatest challenge is our mindset and low community self-esteem. Peoria has always been resilient and evolved, since it was a French settlement in 1691. ALL those who have this community ‘ down for the count ‘ and underestimate it will be very surprised, in the near future, not only by it’s perseverance but awesome progress…. Hallelujah!
i live in peoria area myself… two decades at this point… you make some fine good points…and i applaud you…such as the potential of casting off the cat yoke… yet… the two poles of dissonance seem to be the need for attracting/keeping talent/families vs. identifying/building something up for oneself or the area (kind of the core of the discussion of the original piece by the bradley professor who seemed stuck in his tracks to look beyond his navel as it was all about him)… you thread the needle well on the change towards healthcare and localized businesses…
yet what keeps people from staying peoria city proper is the margin for peoria city schools itself…its razor thin from being arsenic…from old lace… and other stengths vs. weakness …also i’m not so sure the 17th century identity has ever been part of identity in the peoria people associate itself or resilience… just saying that creve coure means something to the effect of bitter dissapointment… peoria is a stones throw away… ever since i moved here i’ve felt it always paddle against the current of itself by trying to be something it was not by hiring outside consultants to guide to city leaders(downtown riverfront development and then there is the museum)… so you make a good point about “general” insecurity…
yes it could be very very refreshing to see how things occur post cat… though i keep hearing its the move to texas that would really seal the fate of peoria’s cat connnection…
on the positives the city.county has superior park district which i credit to its working class connections for perambulating form the previous century, as well as a localized support for the baseball stadium that thankfully did not lean on local taxes if i recall… i love the architectural history and the river valley is dramatic in its own way for people willing to drop their cell phones for a while… i think it was great that the local zoo took to its feet over the recent years and that a kids museum has a stand alone site in the oark district… basically it should embrace what it has instead of follow the craptacular distractions of following what the next middling city is doing… maybe the professor needed to get out a bit more instead of spending so much time on the internet as he acknowledged,,,,,
Another key part of the discussion is that, by his telling, faculty got two 1% raises in his seven years there. That’s not going to keep anyone in any city. And if you’re feeling lonely and miserable, it makes the decision that much easier.
The fact that the person is an academic changes this dynamic than being a typical professional.
Thriving or not, a city of that size is only going to have so many amenities, though if the economy were better, I bet is has enough amenities and social life for many Americans.
Small, rust belt cities like Peoria, Evansville, South Bend, Michigan City. Anderson, Muncie, Kokomo and Ft Wayne will continue to have a hard time attracting young people. Peoria has Bradley University and South Bend has Notre Dame, but student do not stay in those towns. Especially Notre Dame students are immediately attracted to big cities like Chicago, New York, DC and Boston. Why would a kid with brains and talent and a degree stay in a rural town?
Aside from strong family, marital, and/or cultural ties, some may prefer to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. Some may see the opportunity to run a successful business or practice in an area with little or no competition in the region. I also imagine there are some Dr. ‘Moonlight’ Graham types out there who just want to make a difference in their hometown. Admittedly, there probably is not a large number of people that fall into those categories, but those are all plausible explanations.
I’m originally from the Springfield MO area. Springfield is larger than Peoria ( metro population is over 400,000 ). Unlike Peoria, it is growing at a slow to moderate pace, and has a fairly diverse economy. It’s also situated in the Ozarks so it has much better outdoor recreation opportunities compared to a city like Peoria, which sits in the middle of corn and soybean fields. Springfield also has a large state university and a small liberal arts college. And it was never dominated by one company or had a lot of heavy industry, so it’s not a classic rust belt town.
But I’m not sure Springfield could be categorized as a rising mid-size city, because I sense a brain-drain there as well. Much of the growth there is people moving from surrounding rural areas and retirees looking for a cheaper place to live. The city is mainly a regional commercial center, with a lot of relatively low-paying retail and service jobs. That brings some economic stability but it is not the kind of economy that attracts talent. Most of the educated people I knew there have moved to Kansas City, St Louis, or other large cities in the Midwest or the coasts.
So even some “growing” mid-sized cities that have a number of things in their favor appear to have a problem attracting and retaining talent and good-paying jobs.
Pundits have been bemoaning this “brain drain” for decades/centuries/millenia. The real issue is structuring an economy and society so that the lesser places still offer a civilized lifestyle for those who are not the alpha dogs of the economy and society,. Not everyone can be an Internet Genius who invents the next Facebook. Or the next “free delivery service” that relies on an innumerate, underemployed workforce to desperately service their clients.
Good points ! It’s just a fact that not every place can be Silicon Valley, Boston or Austin. Talent, brains and ambition have always clustered disproportionately in large cities. As was stated earlier, the mid-sized cities which are state capitols and have a large university are generally doing well. The key for other mid-sized cities is to capitalize on their roles as regional commercial hubs and provide opportunities and upward mobility for middle-class people who may not have a college degree or are not inclined to relocate. Keeping living costs low, creating a business-friendly environment with an easy-entry economy for entrepreneurs, and building/maintaining infrastructure are good starting points for mid-sized cities. These things are necessary but not sufficient.
Not Everyone can be on top, but everyone must learn to play by the rules that those on the top create or they not only fail to grow but actually lose economic relevance. The relative success of Boston, Austin, or any other American metro is a measure of the extent to which each city has learned to play the game created in Silicon Valley/Bay Area. The danger is not losing your ‘local charm’ but in losing your economic rationale altogether.