My latest column is online in the Indianapolis Business Journal. Obviously it’s about Indianapolis, but similar arguments apply to basically every other basically well-performing Midwest city. They are completely parochial talent sheds and need to attract from further afield. Here’s an excerpt:
Nashville won 5,000 Amazon jobs despite being smaller and having fewer tech jobs than Indianapolis. One reason is that Nashville draws people from all over the country, while Indianapolis overwhelmingly draws from just Indiana. Metro Indy actually loses people on a net basis to the rest of the country outside of Indiana. It’s even losing people to California.
Indy has plenty of company. No major Midwest city is a national draw – yet. Changing this is the biggest imperative – and biggest opportunity – for the city.
Turning Indianapolis to a national, not just a state or regional talent magnet can happen. Indy will never compare to the coastal giants, but it very much can replicate the success of Southern boomtowns like Nashville. As someone who has traveled to Nashville for years and really likes that city, I can tell you it has no intrinsic advantages over Indy and has its own serious flaws.
Even just a decade ago, Nashville businesses could struggle to recruit out of state talent just like Midwest cities do. Two or three decades ago the city was a backwater, an overgrown small town. But they figured out how to change that.
Click through to read the whole thing.
LEO Weekly, Louisville’s alt-weekly, also just republished a version of my blog post from last year about what a boondoggle the Louisville bridges project was.
Geography still matters and I think Indy is too close to Chicago to follow Nashville’s example. If you’re going to move to the Midwest, why put yourself or your business tantalizingly just beyond metro Chicago? Nashville is far enough away from Atlanta that it doesn’t have to compete with it on air travel and logistics networks, not to mention social and cultural offerings. I know professionals in Indy who organize their entire social and cultural life around access to Chicago. They look to Midway and Ohare when buying plane tickets and to Chicago when looking for plays and concerts. They are on the alert for conferences and events in Chicago that are relevant to their work. My friends in Columbus don’t do that because you can’t drive to Chicago and have the time and energy to participate in such events in a day while flying, even if just a short one, makes everything much more complicated.
Yes, I think Aaron dramatically underplays the importance of geography and other fundamentals when it comes to a city’s fortunes.
I just haven’t seen convincing evidence that branding on its own drives in-migration. It’s actually the reverse for most cities, I think. It is the new residents chasing improving economic or social conditions that trigger a change in culture and the subsequent branding.
Nashville is a state capital with stable government jobs halfway between Chicago and Atlanta with the independent logistics to serve those cities and not as many legacy costs as Memphis (which has a richer history and culture in my opinion) Those are objective qualities that rank it above its peer cities. The boost to Nashville’s cultural reputation is a side effect.
Cities like Austin and Boise are largely the beneficiaries of California out-migration since people rarely move cross-country except when the environmental or economic factors make it a no-brainer. It’s not an option that’s available to Midwest cities until something like climate change triggers another mass migration in a century or two.
The issue with Renn’s advice for Indianapolis is that stuff like auto racing are niche sports that developed out of the Midwest’s auto manufacturing economy. It’s not an actual city culture that drives broader decision-making. Cities also can’t wish up a culture out of nothing: a risk-averse town just can’t all of a sudden decide to be venture capitalist risk-takers. It’s too much of a leap.
If we look at Chicago as an example, the city’s culture is decidedly based around a passion for politics, community organizing and fights for or against social reform. There’s a direct cultural lineage from ‘The Jungle’ to the works of Alex Kotlowitz. The city hosts business conventions today because it loved hosting political conventions in the past. Chicago tries to be safe and pragmatic like its Midwestern neighbors, but explodes every single time a social crisis strikes the city.
It damages the city’s reputation considerably, but it does protect against the city becoming socially and culturally stagnant.
That’s where Indianapolis struggles. It’s not culture-less, but compared to Chicago’s militancy and explosiveness and Detroit’s urban reckoning, Indianapolis just comes across as boring. It doesn’t have Chicago or Detroit’s troubles; things are mostly fine, but comfort doesn’t lead to innovation… and it’s very telling that Indiana’s highest-profile, most audacious resident is the mayor of South Bend just outside of Chicago’s cultural orbit – and not a resident of its biggest city.
Austin is the exact same distance from Dallas that Indy is from Chicago.
These explanations are are just-so reasoning. When a place succeeds, we look around for things to attribute it to. When it fails, we do the same. In some respects cities are subject to forces they can’t control, but there are plenty of things cities can do. These sorts of explanations breed fatalism.
The 500 and Indy did have a cultural impact. Combined with the tradition of high school basketball in the state, it primed the city culturally to build out its sports hosting strategy that paid big dividends. And 30 years ago, Nashville’s civic leaders looked down their noses at country music. They thought of themselves as the “Athens of the South” instead.
Chicago’s community organizing tradition is a shell of what it used to be.
Austin is even closer to Houston than to Dallas. If there were another Chicago-sized city to the east of Indy the same distance that Chicago is to the north of Indy, that is, if Columbus were the size of Chicago, then Indy’s position within America’s economic geography would be very different. Living and/or investing in Indy would be much more appealing if it were located between two major metros than perched awkwardly just beyond Chicago’s sphere of influence on one side with several modestly-sized metros with no clear economic advantages over Indy on the other. This marginalizes Indy. It’s on the edge of the midwestern web of metros instead in the middle of it. Economists call this an economic ‘externality.’
Every single Midwest metro that’s decent performing (even MSP) has the same exact migration pattern as Indy. Proximity to Chicago or anywhere else hasn’t affected it.
It’s questionable whether Chicago itself is even much of an attractor. The region has a whole has gigantic outmigration to pretty much everywhere. In the city, there has been a big surge in young, educated people. But in the suburbs, the number of young, educated people has declined in the bigger places (Cook, DuPage, Lake) during an era in which people have become more educated. The Chicago city story at a minimum contains a very material part (maybe nearly all of it) that is simply a reshuffle of where young, educated people live within the region itself vs. the past.
Correlation isn’t causation. Smaller midwest metros draw from their own smaller spheres of influence BECAUSE Chicago draws from beyond the Midwest as well as from within the region. Smaller midwest metros aren’t drawing from beyond their spheres BECAUSE Chicago draws any migration from beyond the Midwest to the region. Reshuffling of the midwests young professionals builds Chicago into a place that draws from beyond the midwest. Without Chicago’s presence, Indy wouldn’t have to sacrifice it’s professionals chicago and some would remain in Indy instead building its labor force and civil life.
“Indiana’s highest-profile, most audacious resident”
I’d suggest that this might be the Vice President, not the Mayor.
One need not agree with Pence’s politics to agree that he is arguably more polarizing than Pete.
Also, he is from the Indy CSA/media market and was in fact a radio talk show host here.
And beyond those two, there’s Mitch Daniels, the first governor in the modern era to be from Indy. He’s currently shaking up higher ed as president of Purdue. (Purdue controversially took over Kaplan U several years back. They’ve also frozen tuition for the past 5 years.)
Haha, well, I left out Pence because he’s been a very absentee Vice President compared to his predecessors, Dick Cheney and Joe Biden, regardless of his politics. He’s just sort of… there, with little discernible power or influence over key figures in D.C.
I’m very skeptical of the idea that branding alone without deep fundamentals can trigger a boom, but if so, the local celebrities and politicians as the face of the city would be a crucial part of that branding. If Mike Pence and Mitch Daniels are at the top of the Indianapolis notable persons lists (David Letterman being retired and all), then Indy has a lot of work to do.
For “notable” we have (the late) Kurt Vonnegut, whose appeal is timeless. And Letterman. And our adopted residents Danica Patrick, Mario Andretti, and Helio Castroneves…always good for a quip or quote.
(Note, to Aaron’s point: all the living figures I mentioned are associated with auto racing. Dave is a longtime team owner.)
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Perhaps you missed Pence’s picks in the healthcare arena. The head of CMMS, Seema Verma, and the head of HHS, Alex Azar are both Hoosiers he persuaded The Donald to appoint.
A great suggestions on really centering recruiting around racing and speed, especially because that ties so well into Indianapolis’ burgeoning tech marketing scene. What is going to be important for Indianapolis, as a city, is to really differentiate itself from Indiana, the state. Austin and Nashville have done a great job of becoming their own stand-alone brands, attracting people who, frankly, otherwise are repelled by the politics in the states of Texas and Nashville.
One thing I wonder in the interim — would it be a help or hindrance for Indianapolis businesses to be more flexible than those in other cities regarding remote work? That doesn’t necessarily bring people to the city, but it certainly raises its profile nationally and internationally. And those people are going to work in the city from time to time. Perhaps I’m a bit biased because my wife works remotely for an Indianapolis company that has embraced remote work.
They were able to do it because both are far enough from competing urban centers where the existing centers of political power are focused.
Indianapolis, like Nashville and Austin, is the capital and center of its state’s politics. Further, the population of Tennesee is virtually the same as Indiana.
Indy is no more than 5-6 hours drive and in the midst of Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Nashville, Memphis, Pittsburgh, Columbus, and The City Not to be Named Here.
I’m having a lot of trouble following how all your various arguments apply simultaneously.
I’m making one argument. Indy is too close to Chicago. Chicago’s economy utterly dominates the midwest. Indy isn’t “in the midst” of those cities. This might help to explain it’s economic relationships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_States#/media/File:MapofEmergingUSMegaregions.png
If you draw lines through the metros I mentioned, Indy is indeed in the midst of them.
Many of the key economic relationships are not with Chicago. Chicago has almost no role in the world pharma, maeketing tech, automotive, and ag science industries. It has a limited and recent role in aerospace.
These are the key economic drivers of the Indy metro.
If you calculate the relative economic importance of the metros you mentioned you’ll see that that doesn’t matter. Chicago has the economic pull of all of them combined.
And you still haven’t addressed the fact that Chicago has relatively smaller pull in the industries where the Indy region is strong.
Something made Infosys put a major campus in Indy.
Something made Salesforce keep the core of ExactTarget in the center of downtown Indy…and grow it. Something made GE put their advanced jet engine facility in Lafayette, Indiana, an hour from downtown Indy, instead of suburban Chicago or Cincinnati. Something made Novartis pay $2.1 billion for a homegrown Indy/Lafayette biotech company…and keep it here. Something made Corteva designate Indy as a key center of innovation. Something made Honda and Subaru continually increase production capacity at their plants within commuting range of Indy instead of building new ones in Texas or Tennessee.
Are you in the payroll of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce? The total value of a metro’s economy is what matters. A buck is a buck, however it’s earned. NYC has no car assembly plants or advanced jet engine facility, but it’s the most economically important city on earth.
No. I just have firsthand knowledge of the metro area’s history, economic strengths and drivers.
You don’t seem to understand specialization as an important economic concept, and as a key underpinning of economic geography.
That a metro with a failed city at its core (Detroit) continues to be a key control node in a globally significant industry is evidence of this.
Chicago can be the “Capital of the Midwest” AND other Rust Belt metros can be important in their own right because (1) they are specialized and innovative in key industries/activities and (2) they have political power and eds/meds complexes.
All those examples I cited are evidence of innovation and specialization in the Indy region.
So, you’re not a disinterested observer here. The other metros of the midwest developed their economy in a region dominated by Chicago. Without the presence of Chicago their economies would have developed in very different ways…ways that might have made them into cities able to compete with Nashville or Austin.
I’m an informed observer, just like Aaron (who also has considerable firsthand knowledge).
You’re a participant in Indianapolis’ economy and society.
And this makes my insights and data points less valuable? How?
You’re offering arguments, not “data points.” You’re not a computer.
If being a participant in a city’s economy and society make Chris’ comments less valuable, can we expect fewer “arguments” from Matt, a “non computer” presumably, regarding the City That Shall Not be Named and others with which he claims familiarity? I’m guessing not, for reasons to be “explained” shortly.
I would love someone to challenge me descriptions of the City That Shall Not Be Named.
I’ve challenged your opinions about Indy and your response was to dismiss any facts and knowledge I present as unimportant because I live and work in the metro.
On this basis (and because our gracious host won’t stand for it), no one is going to address anything you say about That One City in particular.
And at this point, few seem willing to take your assertions about other cities seriously either.
I never expressed an opinion about Indianapolis. How do you know how others feel about my writing? I never said your views were “unimportant” I just said that they weren’t unassailable “facts.”
Maybe this is a bit glib, but my impression is that Indianapolis is like Columbus without Ohio State and all of Columbus’ back office IT work. Which is to say, an affordable midwestern metro that has an okay job market and doesn’t have the problems of a rust belt or old river town. I would grant that just like Nashville, it is nothing special as a city, but just because one better than average state capital was able to convince folks from the coast that it has magic soil, doesn’t mean that another city can do so.
That presumes that PR is actually a causative force instead of an expression of the interests and identities of those who hold economic power. When people respond to ads, PR, etc,, they aren’t actually responding to the content. They are responding to their perception that the creator of the PR is powerful and that they see opportunity in engaging that source of power in some way. Apple’s rise is the classic example of this. Advertisers don’t have to convince anyone of the value of their good or service. They have to convince people of their power in society and how their product or service helps them gain access to economic power. The only thing that convinces people to move to Nashville is their individual financial calculation of the access to economic power that it offers them. No city is ‘overpriced’ or ‘underpriced.’ Every city’s costs reflect the value of the individual economic potential afforded by living there. ‘Coolness’ isn’t a cause, it’s an effect…an effect of your ability to gather and direct economic power. The City That Shall Not Be Named is by many measures the most affordable city in America despite the almost religious devotion of its residents to it because its current and prospective residents have calculated it gives them the least valuable access to economic power, not because it’s PR campaigns are insufficiently appealing. Most people aren’t the fools you take them to be.
If a lot of people aren’t fools, then why do so many people live in Florida?
So, you DO think that most people are easily-led fools. Why do YOU think so many people move to Florida?
At least in one major Gulf Coast market, they think they are inhabited by billion-year old space demons and need to be CLEARED with the amazing “technology” developed in Clearwater
Not necessarily most people, but a large share of people.
Florida will routinely be hit by massive hurricanes and will be beset by blue sky flooding. So it is foolish to own property there, especially near the coasts, unless you are going to achieve a good ROI in a relatively short period of time and then sell. Even then, it would be wiser to invest in real estate in a less climatically risky place.
Let’s not even mention how many fools were required to create the subprime/financial crisis.
Yes, the social values and limited resources of some social groups make them good fodder for jokes, but they are acting rationally given their goals and interests. Their only real investment of many middle ( not professional) class Americans is the value of their house. The house they buy in Florida will appreciate more in value than the one they sell in Indiana. They’ll gain access to a place that has superior medical services because of the concentrations of older people providing doctors and hospitals with the steady income made possible by medicare. They’ll live amongst others of who’ve done the same as them and therefore be able to magnify their political power living in the same towns, electoral districts, and state, too. After they die, they’ll leave their children a house worth far more than the old homestead in Indiana, too. AND…the state of Florida has created a state-backed insurance system to protect their house from hurricanes and floods. You’re personal sense of rationality is not an objective measure of the actions of others.
…and Florida has no state income tax.
The subprime crisis was created by evil geniuses, not fools. They’re opposites. The financial crisis was a small band of financial dealers gaming a system. The people who bought the mortgage backed securities, received the mortgages, or bought the houses were doing the best they could given the choices they had. The failures were not individual, they were systemic.
The subprime crisis could not have happened if people had not purchased houses they could not afford. Sure, they thought they were making a good decision based upon what property values had been doing, but that was foolish, and many people said, based upon comparisons of rents to prices. Those evil geniuses needed the fools to make their plans work.
The subprime crisis could not have happened if federal laws and regulators hadn’t allowed the creation of credit default swaps and other investments. The home buyers were not foolish. Nor were the members of Congress who voted to allow such changes. There were no “plans” there were individuals rationally operating in a system that has allowed too-much self-interested manipulation of the system. Again, the problems were systematic not individual. The individual behaviors were not foolish, the system broke down.
The homes were unaffordable BECAUSE of all the credit pouring into real estate from the credit default swaps and the rest. The systematic break down CAUSED the increase in house prices. Is it foolish to buy an exurban mcmansion that entirely depends on access to a free expressway for its value in the market? No. The failures are systematic. Expressways that are not only free, but are actually subsidized for users are a systematic failure, not an individual one. Again, the problem was systematic, not individual fools.
I would bet that many educated, talented young people find the idea of auto-racing culture to be completely repulsive.
I would bet that many highly educated, talented young people would find auto-racing culture to be completely repulsive.
And others would be drawn to the technology that blends aerodynamics, physics, mechanics, and electronic controls. Modern vehicles are sophisticated rolling computers.
There is still a very large automotive industry in the US.
Indiana has many component suppliers and four vehicle assembly plants (two of which are within commuting range of the Indy metro). This is why auto racing sprang up here more than 100 years ago.
A metro doesn’t have to appeal to everyone. I hate cold winters and as an adult never considered living north of the 40th parallel, roughly a line due west from Valley Forge through Columbus, Indianapolis, and KC. (This is informed by two winters in MSP as a kid.)
You do have to appeal to many if you want to achieve the levels of growth found in Austin or Nashville.
This isn’t exactly so. See MSP, capital of the north.
A metro merely has to appeal to just enough people, and/or it has to dominate a vast emptying quarter and become the professional/eds/meds destination therein. (See also Pittsburgh, the Capital of Northern Appalachia.)
It is so, if you want to grow in the way that Nashville has grown.
Growth at all cost is the ideology of the cancer cell.
And also the ideology of the US for basically all of its existence, for what it is worth. Maybe Trump will change that.
Indianapolis can emulate Nashville’s success if it relocates from the corn belt to a more picturesque setting, abolishes the state income tax, convinces the federal government to engineer it a massive water management system providing heavily subsidized electricity and water and creating new regional lakes for boating and sport fishing, and establishes a 400-year-old folkway that’s vaguely connected to a billion-dollar entertainment industry.
Indianapolis drew a bad hand in terms of location, exacerbated only slightly by Hoosier provincialism. It’s never going to be a city starry-eyed bohemians or overly credulous corporate relocaters read about in the New York Times and move to on a whim. Indy should focus on steak-and-potatoes jobs and micro quality of life first, and let the cultural pieces fall into place on their own.
And auto racing is a heck of a lot more expensive start-up career/hobby than country music, and a much less frequently performed one.
Well, I’ll shoot my mouth off once in this interesting discussion.
The problem for me is Indianapolis and many other central Midwest cities are misunderstood. Long held perceptions are ancient and tired (Frostbelt, Rustbelt, Flyover Country, blah, blah, blah).
There’s a region that’s emerging I call the “Mid-South.” Walmart is there, Eli Lilly is there. Fed Ex is there. And so many others.
It’s not your classic Midwest prairie, nor is it the Dixie of the Deep South – but it has the most temperate weather of both regions. Longer summers and shorter heinous winters than that of the Great Lakes region, shorter heinous summers and longer winters than the Deep South. A lot of people in the Mid-South enjoy active, outdoors focused lifestyles, and the weather conditions provide for a greater range of activities than you get in the Great Lakes and Deep South.
Think of it as a loop that starts in Charleston, WV and then runs west to Columbus, Indy, St. Louis, KC, Topeka, Wichita, OKC and Tulsa. And then back east through Little Rock, Memphis, Chattanooga, Knoxville and Charleston again.
This region also includes Louisville, Cincinnati and Nashville. Nashville is probably the eastern capital of the region, and if someone said the Bentonville / Fayetteville, AR metro area was the western capital I wouldn’t argue too much.
In this scenario, Indianapolis (and its “zone of influence” sub-region within a 60-minute drive time) is a gateway between the Great Lakes region to the north and the Mid–South to the south. In many respects, they have the best of all the northern Mid-South gateway cities (Columbus, St. Louis, KC, etc) because of their proximity to Chicago and other Great Lakes markets. Which are still pretty powerful I understand.
I think the concept of the Mid-South is a big secret that coastal focused investors have overlooked. What the Mid-South concept does is cast new light on how the cities that comprise the Mid-South can reposition themselves in the marketplace regarding their traditional, old school geographic identities as Midwestern or Deep South cities.
I concur to great deal. In addition to the economic activity you mention, the belt from AR east to SC is becoming a stronger retirement draw than the traditional Sun Belt (albeit South Carolina draws more retirees from the northeast than from the great lakes area). And had John Boehner not followed the green smoke to a condo in Miami and remained in house leadership, you would have had a formidable vortex of national political power centered in the greater OKI region.
I might quibble with OKC and Tulsa, but only on the basis of climate. (I’m not sure if you saw my comment above on the MSP drift to this thread…the northern line you suggest along I-70 is also just about the 40th Parallel and the northern edge of temperate winters.)
I agree OKC is a stretch. But the I-35 corridor between Wichita and OKC connects to the Flint Hills, one of the Midwest’s few distinguishable sub-regions. If I’m Czar of the Mid-South, I want that region as part of my identify.
So, OKC becomes the principle southwest gateway city between the Great Plains, the American Southwest and the Mid-South. I think that’s a pretty good place for them to be from an image standpoint. Lots of flexibility regarding brand positioning and marketing options.
And lesson for other Mid-South cities. The major cities in this concept, especially the border cities, can claim a more expansive range of resources for image and marketing purposes. That’s the point – the cities connected to the Mid-South have more marketplace firepower than they know and are now leveraging.
Old identities based on state and county boundaries are archaic, and they’ve been underperforming for decades. The cities of the Mid-South have a much more attractive story to tell if they recognize it.
Sounds like you are talking about Greater Appalachia.
Columbus and Indianapolis historically have drawn population from Appalachian counties as defined by the federal Appalachian Regional Commission.
About 1/4 to 1/3 of Ohio (including a couple of counties in the Columbus CSA) is legally defined as Appalachia. Pittsburgh is in Appalachia.
It is why folks sometimes (crassly) refer to Indiana as “the middle finger of the South”.
So, “Greater Appalachia” might indeed be a synonym for “Mid-South”.
P Burgos:
The “Mid-South” concept is designed to transform old labels like “Greater Appalachia” into more contemporary economic development opportunities.
It appears you may be the definition of what Jane Jacobs described as a “squelcher.” Look it up.
Oh wait, I’ll save you the inconvenience:
https://raisethehammer.org/blog/1006/defining_squelchers
Defining “Squelchers”
By Ryan McGreal
Published May 15, 2008
From Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City? (Random House Canada 2008), p. 181:
Jane Jacobs once told me that communities everywhere are filled with creative vigor, but that some of them are run by squelchers.
Squelchers are control freaks who think they know what’s best for the city or region, even as their leadership (or lack thereof) causes a hemorrhage of bright, talented, and creative people.
Squelchers, she said, are the kind of leaders that use the word “no” a lot. They constantly put roadblocks in the way of community energy and initiatives.
I’ve seen firsthand how these squelchers drain the life and energy from their communities. They respond to new ideas with phrases like “That’s not how we do things here”; “That will never fly”; or “Why don’t you move someplace you’ll be happy?”
I often wonder what our nation would look like if all the squelchers in our communities were to be suddenly – and magically – exposed and immobilized. Would there be anyone left at the tops of many local governments? Perhaps then we could finally unleash the positive energy that real civic engagement both inspires and needs. [paragraph breaks added]
THE problem at the heart of the City That Shall Not Be Named is the coordinated efforts of its local elite to squelch threats to their power from inside and outside the metro. Without that city, they have no power or social standing in the world and they’ll fight for their local power at all costs.
It’s not just geography.
Indy is ~180 miles from Chicago and Nashville is about 250 miles from Atlanta.
Yet Nashville have broader and stronger in migration.
Yes there is climate etc., but it’s just more complicated.
As a former Chicago resident and now an adopted Hoosier, I’m reminded of how remarkably liveable a place Indy is every time I visit there. Visitors I take there have the same reaction. Chicago is money-driven. People are either on the make or on the take, or into a sort of bourgeois-bohemian lifestyle. You don’t encounter too much of that in Indy. This may be a problem but it’s also an advantage. I think Aaron is right. Indy needs to get the word out and cast a wider net. Maybe it should hire one of those Chicago PR firms.
If Indy gets the word out, it will attract the very “money-driven” people you bemoan. There isn’t much point in attracting people without money, is there? Cities can’t be successful without money.
That’s not necessarily true. Immigrants (without much money) contribute to the growth of metros.
Their labor only has value because someone who has money is willing to employ them. The immigrants can’t contribute to the growth of the metro unless others with money to invest are also there. Capitalism is the meeting of labor and capital.
First-generation immigrants are more likely to create credit unions to finance each other and small businesses that capture more wealth within the community than, say, a Western Union and a Walgreen’s. They also create a market for specialty goods and services.
Such efforts are marginally significant in the context of metropolitan economies. It’s certainly not a significant contributor to the growth of America’s more successful metros today. I wouldn’t recommend it to any midwest metros.
I am less skeptical, as many Sunbelt cities with large first generation immigrant communities demonstrate.
They demonstrate that the presence of capital is necessary for creating a demand for immigrant labor.
Nice article. I agree that maintaining and growing a high quality of life standard is key now, not just the marketing plan roll out that every city now does. Mountains and oceans are no longer a major driving factor given that climate change now is hitting the coastal cities harder each year resulting in rising real estate and insurance costs.
Lack of traffic, virtually no taxes, low(est) cost of living, great parks, the number one airport, major foodie city, excellent schools, the modern mass transit system, a $10B philanthropic foundation, major convention center, are Indy’s distinct advantages.
The rotation of the championship level sporting events and large conventions are great at getting worldwide exposure. But, it does not expose the great QoL in Indy at any level of depth. Nor does it covert those 27M visitors that come to Indy each year into new residents. Elevating Indy’s existing cultural events like what other cities have done could change that.
Look at some the cultural events and placemaking that are essentially built from nothing but somehow get national attention. SXSW, Art Basel, Wynwood, Meow Wolf, the Riverwalk and Music Row. An art fair that attracts 85k attendees yet takes place in a beach town most famous for college spring break. A City with bats under a bridge. An aging warehouse district that is on a concrete island with no trees. Music Row was nothing 15 years ago other than shell of old buildings. Meow Wolf is next to a freeway interchange.
Indy needs to elevate the great art and culture it has right now getting visitors to be more than a sporting event spectator. Everyone needs interact more deeply with Indy to see the great reasons to live here.