Are climate change and affordability drawing people back to Midwest states?

Welcome to All Sides with Amy Jurevich. The Midwest has been home of businesses that not only contributed to the region's growth, but to the nation's growth as well, from the automotive industry in Detroit to tire manufacturing in Akron to steel and machine tools in Cleveland. However, the closing of factories and loss of jobs has resulted in an exodus of the population. and a decline of the Midwest. For decades, people moved to the more affordable South. And it was more affordable for a time. However, there's hope the Midwestern exodus could be turning into an influx. Technology companies are looking to the Midwest as an affordable alternative to expensive cities like Atlanta and San Francisco. We're looking at what's bringing people back to the Midwest this hour. And joining us now, we have Demographic Strategist, author, and founder and CEO of Human Change, Bradley Sherman. He studies how demographic change reshape cities, markets in everyday life. Welcome to All Sides, Bradley. I was going to be here. Thanks for having me. So a Wall Street Journal headline earlier this year that caught our attention, it proclaimed the Midwestern Exodus is finally ending. So as a demographic strategist, do you agree with that headline? 100%. And the data proves it. People are moving back to or into the Midwest for the first time in 50, 60, 75 years. And it's a good sign for the entire region. And we mentioned in the introduction that technology is a factor. Tech companies are picking the Midwest for their startups. They're being asked, like, why aren't you in San Francisco? So why is that? Why are technology companies picking the Midwest? Well, the Midwest, and I would say that Greater Rust Belt, has incredible resources and infrastructure, not only in terms of logistics, but also in terms of education. You see, the Midwestern cities and the Rust Belt cities have great universities attached to them, and many of these are research institutions as well. So it makes a lot of sense for a company like Google to open up an HQ2 or three or four in one of these cities because the cost is there and the brains are there as well. When you add into that a more friendly business environment, which you can find in a state like Ohio, it's a win, win, win all the way around. When you say a more friendly business environment, are you meaning like, how Ohio is known for giving some tax incentives, you know, build your building here, you don't have to pay taxes. Yeah, Ohio is a great giveaway state for companies. Indiana, pretty good as well. The other states in the Midwest are a bit more resistant to giving these big tax breaks away because we need taxes in these cities.

and in these states in order to fund programs and the basics of everyday life, like our roads. And without them, we can see our infrastructure deteriorate, even with our population growing up. I think Ohio is learning slowly but surely about these tax breaks in the long term. But yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the southern states, which have really seen the largesse of growth, certainly since the pandemic years, growing at about twice the rate of the nation as a whole, are really experiencing some terrible growing pains right now because it's really easy and cheap to build sprawl. And a lot of this, the incentive structure is there for it from the Fed to build highways. But those things come at a cost over time. It's much more affordable for a city and a state to build denser places for the population. So besides these tech companies picking the Midwest, what other factors are you seeing that are contributing to reversing the Midwestern exodus? It's cost of living, number one. It's the cost of housing. It's the cost of everyday services. You know, when people did move south, it was cheaper. On every balanced seat, you'll find that is cheaper to live in the south. That has changed pretty dramatically in about the past five years. They're calling it the southern suites where all of these people from the North moved in. We're talking millions of people here. And they brought with them all of the money they had earned in the North, and the North makes much higher salaries on average. As retirees, some of them during the COVID years brought remote jobs with them. And the cost of everything exploded down there. Basically, they were playing catch-up to the northeast. Now it's not that cheap to live there. On top of that, especially in coastal areas of the South, you have an insurance crisis that has emerged effectively overnight over the past five years where... premiums are going up 30 to 40% a year. So on paper, your house might look more affordable, but now you have to pay all this insurance cost on top of it. The Midwest, the Rust Belt states, they largely are immune from this insurance crisis because they are, as some people like to say, climate havens. But let me be clear, there's no such thing as a climate haven. I call them climate haven, ish. Okay, yeah, we'll add that ish to the climate haven. So the insurance crisis, this is happening because if you live in a coastal city, they either won't give you flood insurance or it costs a lot of money for flood insurance. But we hear in the Midwest, we may have flooding, but it's not going to be like a hurricane level. Or maybe it will be, but it won't be as bad or as many or as often. Yeah, you know, the Midwest, ironically, there's a bit of a benefit to the Midwest decline. And one of the decline benefits is that overbuilding didn't happen.

So there's a lot more space for water to go around our big cities. Now, Columbus is struggling with this a bit because it is growing so quickly, and a lot of that area is getting paved over effectively. But cities like Cleveland and Cincinnati... are really thinking about this in a smart way now. In fact, Cincinnati actually has a climate resilience plan now on the books, which is preparing for climate migration. It's one of the first in the nation to do so. Wow. Okay. I didn't know that. We're going to have to look into that. But you did mention Columbus being cited as one of the fastest growing metropolis areas in the Midwest. Are other Midwestern cities seeing regaining population the way, because Columbus never really had as much of an exodus as other parts of the Midwest. We've been a growing city for a long time. But what other cities are you seeing that are regaining population? Nearly all of them. Obviously, you have some places that have not that are still stuck in a demographic death spiral. Places like Akron are one of those places. But cities like Pittsburgh are starting to see their populations increase, albeit very small. Detroit has seed now, market increases in population now for about five years. And that's reversing a nearly three quarter of a century decline. So they're starting to grow again. Places like Ann Arbor are incredibly prosperous, largely due to the university. They actually have to have a housing policy in place to manage the growth of that city. But Chicago's growing as well. Even a city like South Bend. South Bend, Indiana, which is so synonymous with decline in this country, has been seeing its population tick up now for at least the past four years. These places that we rode off for so long are making a comeback. The question is, can they manage the comeback better than the South manage the incoming flux of people moving down there? And I hope they can. This is all sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about... why we could be seeing an end to the Midwestern exodus. And we're talking with Bradley Sherman, demographic strategist, author, founder, and CEO of human change. So what are some lessons learned from the South that, you know, Midwestern leaders can, can listen to this? What do they need to do? Or what should they already have been doing than they're five years late on? I mean, I think the biggest thing, and this is the one thing folks, you know, kind of roll their eyes at, the transportation is the number one thing in cities. Fortunately, for a city like Cleveland, much of that infrastructure already exists. It needs some updating. I know Mayor Bibb has his eyes on this. But you do have to have rail and multimodal transportation available because the other variable in...

everyday cost that is rising out of control right now is the cost of your automobile. The cost of owning a car in this country is absurd these days. And when you add in the instability of the fuel market, you don't know how much you're going to be paying, but a public transportation system can help manage that. And also smart growth. If you're building your cities and your regions with denser, smaller suburbs, rather than this just never-ending sprawl, you're going to create a much better living environment for people overall. And that helps build social cohesion when people are living a bit tighter together. Now, I know people love the idea of having that yard and the picket fence, but that's not necessarily great for your well-being in the end. You mentioned transportation. Columbus is having a lot of growing pains transportation-wise. I don't know if you follow every single city perfectly, but Columbus is a little behind. We don't have any rail. No streetcars, no subway, no passenger trains. We have no rail, and we're trying to play catch-up here. Yeah, I mean, I like to say that my three least favorite letters in the entire alphabet are BRT, bus rapid transit. And that is what a lot of cities are trying to deploy right now. Now, if you do bus rapid transit well, and that's a big if, it can be a phenomenally cheap, efficient way to deliver transportation to the masses. The problem is a lot of these BRTs get built as just express bus lanes. on existing infrastructure. So they're not moving any faster in the traffic. They're just limiting the number of stops. And that doesn't do much to help people overall. However, if you have dedicated bus freeways effectively within cities, that can be a really great cost-effective way to deliver transportation to the people. We're spending a lot of money building some bus rapid transit right now, and it's been delayed because we're waiting on federal money too. So that's a whole other show, though, Bradley. We're not going to talk about that. Everyone is waiting on federal money these days. Yeah. Can you explain the concept of geography of prosperity to our listeners? How does that work? That's something I saw on your website. Yeah, so if you visit Geography of Prosperity.com, you can take a look at 250 urban areas across the United States. These are the largest ones in the country. And what we did, the idea behind this was to decouple economics from the idea of what prosperity actually is within a place. We wanted to look at the foundational piece of what makes life great. So we looked at things like population renewal. climate resilience, social cohesion, whether or not a city was actually prepared for the automation revolution that's currently underway. And then we wanted to see, is a city being governed well? And does the government within a city have great foresight? We took those scores, even them out, and give a list there of about 120 from 1 to 250. And we saw a lot of patterns emerge from this. Cities that do well are doing well at least

four of the five. A city like New York, which comes out at number one, I can hear the collective sigh across the airwaves right now. Of course. Yeah, of course. New York does really well. But New York has really terrible governance and foresight. It's fascinating that a city like that can operate the way it does and have such poor governance. There's some idea that Zohran Mamdani is turning this around, but only time will tell. The cities, though, that really surprised me were cities like Durham, North Carolina, which does well across all five. And the Ohio cities did pretty well overall. So this idea of a city doing really great, they're oftentimes the ones that we didn't think about when we started doing the measure. And that was pretty exciting because it allowed us then to dive deeper and go to these places, meet with these civic leaders, and figure out what their secret sauce actually was. And in every place, it's slightly different. It has to match the culture of the city and of the state. But the places that are really thriving today will likely continue to thrive in the future if they maintain. these measures. Yeah. So looking at your list of the geography of prosperity, I looked for Midwestern city names. And they weren't at the top. They weren't in the top 10. But they were right in the middle, toward the upper middle. There was a lot of Midwestern cities, you know, in the 30s and 40s. So does that mean that they are going to be stuck there on your list? Or do you think they can do some things and like look at the top 10 and figure out how to move up? Yeah. No, I think that, you know, it's interesting in my forthcoming book, The Geography of Prosperity, this idea of not being able to move is really a fallacy. Every city can move up and down on the list, depending on the investments they make. I actually think there's a bit of a Goldilocks zone on the list, especially for investors and individuals looking to build prosperity somewhere. And oftentimes those cities are actually the ones in the middle of the list because they have the foundation in place. And if you speak with local leaders, if you talk to folks on the ground, you can see that they're doing the work there. They just haven't tipped up in the measurements yet. What you also find in these places is incredible affordability. And time and time again, Americans are driven by cost of living almost more than anything else. So it's a really kind of perfect scenario for people to look in the middle and say, actually, that might work for me. Cleveland might be the right spot for me. Yeah. I mean, everyone's talking about affordability and it's a big issue. And I think a lot of people listening would be like, we're having an affordability crisis in the Midwest because the whole entire country is. But they have to realize that maybe. the affordability crisis. It is more affordable here. It depends on who you're comparing to, right? Exactly. Perspective is everything. You know, I made the mistake early on. And when we were promoting the work of the Geography of Prosperity Index, where I said, you know, Ann Arbor has really great affordability. Whoops.

Well, I said that was going to be the last question, but now I have another one. Are we seeing the growth just in cities, though? What about the suburbs? I mean, is that, like, what are, Midwest, Midwest is full of suburbs. So where are we, where are we focusing in on here? Well, in my work, it's primarily urban areas that oftentimes catches the immediate suburbs as well, but it doesn't get into the exurbs or rural areas. Rural America has been suffering now for 50 years, and the depopulation that's happening is not turning around anytime soon. This was really a focus of my first book, The Super Age, decoding our demographic destiny. turning around rural America is going to be really, really hard. Now, if you live in a rural city or a rural county that's within about an hour's drive or hours train ride, depending on what the infrastructure looks like in your region, it might actually be doing really, really well. But if you go into the middle of the country where there aren't a lot of cities, These towns are pretty bleak today. Okay. So the Midwestern exodus, if it's turning into an influx and the exodus is over, people moving back here are going to move closer to the cities, though. Yeah, that's what younger people want. Younger people want to live closer to cities. Younger people have this desire to live in a connected place. They are hungry for any type of human connection these days because so much of their life exists online. And largely, they're willing to pay a tradeoff to live in a city, a smaller place maybe. maybe spend a little bit more money because the cost of housing in cities is historically more expensive. The cost per square footage is more expensive. But that's the kind of lifestyle they're really interested in. That shifts a bit when people have kids, when people marry and have kids. But even those numbers have been offered for decades. People are delaying marriage. They're delaying having children into their 30s now, breaking from historic norms. We've been speaking about people returning to the Midwest and whether the Midwest exodus is over with Bradley Sherman, demographic strategist, author, and founder and CEO of human change. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for having me. And coming up, we're going to talk about how much climate migration could play into the end of the Midwestern exodus. And we'll talk with two Ohio State professors. That's when AllSides continues on 897 NPR News.

The fatal shooting of a teenager at a protest in Seattle has gone unsolved for six years. This is open in your face. How are there no answers? Our investigation has uncovered new evidence and witnesses who say they've never talked to police. Did police ever call you? Not once. Listen to We Keep Us Safe, a new true crime series on the Embedded podcast from NPR. You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Durevich. The decline of population in the Midwest due to loss of manufacturing and other jobs is reversing. The affordability of the Midwest, the more extreme weather conditions of other areas of the country, as well as the ability to work remotely, are some of the reasons people are returning to the Midwest. Joining us now to offer their perspectives on whether climate migration could end the Midwestern exodus are Bart Elmore, who teaches environmental and business history at Ohio State University. Welcome back to all sides, Bart. Thanks so much. And then we have Jason Reese, professor of city and regional planning at the Nolton School of Architecture at Ohio State University. Welcome, Jason. Yeah, thank you. Jason, let's start with you, a city and regional planner. Do you see the Midwest as kind of a climate refuge from the extreme flooding, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires that the other parts of the country experience? Now, I'm saying that with in mind, you know, we do see flooding in central Ohio as evidenced at the moment, but maybe not as extreme as constant hurricanes and that kind of thing. So is the Midwest overall this area and the state surrounding it a climate refuge? Yeah, I would agree with that. And as you noted, it's all relative. So we can still expect erratic behavior. more extreme events, but we're not going to see some of the catastrophic damage that may happen in other coastal areas. Okay. And Bart, for you, I'm going to take you back a little bit of history. There were harsh conditions in the 1930s. It was called the Dust Bowl era. And the U.S. government actually made people move, you know, like the resettlement administration program. Can you tell us more about that and whether that could apply to today? Can we make people move to certain areas? Yeah, I think one of the questions questions now is who's going to be coming and from where. I think it's right to think about the American Southwest, just given the fact that it's going to be, you know, it's so arid there. You think about Columbus that gets, I think it's historic averages around 40 inches of rain a year, but nowadays we're getting upwards of 50, 56 inches of rain a year. versus, say, Las Vegas. I just looked it up because we took students there, and it was for a national park trip, and it was 4.6 inches of rain a year, right? And as climate change worsens, as snowfall on the Rockies prevents the Colorado River from having the kind of water that can supply that, we're going to see something akin to what we saw in the 1930s with these big droughts in the American West.

people who could not survive in those periods. And just to be clear, that was 1931, the first droughts in the Great Plains. They extended all the way to the 1940s. So imagine a decade worth of drought. And that's not something that's going to be uncommon in an era of climate change. We're going to see that again. And these folks had to go somewhere. So I think the lesson of that period is, and you highlighted it, is that the federal government actually tried to get involved. They created something called the resettlement administration. And I think it's worth, as a historian, kind of remembering that and saying, well, what did we learn from that? Well, the original plan was to try and resettle hundreds of thousands of Americans in places that would be more suitable to live, given the droughts. And also trying to take people out of urban areas that were really struggling as well and find places where they could have suitable housing and so forth and so on. hundreds of thousands of people were planned to be moved, but only a few thousand were. And that's in part because there was tremendous blowback from Congress, people saying this is a socialistic government overtake of our liberties and so forth and so on. So, you know, a resettlement administration is going to run into a lot of headway. But I think there's a role to play not just at the state and city level for the federal government to think about this, to be proactive and thinking about, okay, this is going to happen. How do we make sure that this process of migration moves smoothly? So maybe we'll see something like a resettlement administration, though it's somewhat controversial. Yeah, well, Jason, I mean, as a city and regional planner, someone who planned out cities in Arizona, right? So we have the technology now. We can get water there, whether, you know, there's enough or not, you know, can be debated. But, I mean. Should we be building in places like that or should we be investing in an area like the Midwest that may be more suitable for a longer period of time? Yeah, I think in short, probably not, not the way we've been building for the last half century or so. I'd also note with the Southwest is that, you know, during this time period, certainly there's technology, but just from a historical perspective, this is one of the wetter periods in the Southwest in recent history. that they had prior to this recent draft. So I think in some ways the Southwest may be returning back to more typical. conditions, all of that gets exacerbated by climate change, which then kind of throws our historical views of climate trends kind of out the window because it's just harder to predict. And meanwhile, yes, we sit, you know, next to 20% of the world's fresh water here in the Great Lakes region, which is going to be a critical asset to our region's future. And it is going to be attractive because, you know, water is essential to any city. And I think we've probably reached the technological limits of what we can do in terms of water diversion and things of that nature that we did, you know, 50 years ago, which also, should we know, caused a tremendous amount of environmental harm. All right, so we're, we should be done moving water. In other words, yes. And

Jason, do you think that, you know, smaller mid-sized cities in the Rust Belt could see a renaissance, you know, existing infrastructures as its houses and buildings being refurbished? You know, there's been a long time where people were just moving away from the Midwest. They were, you know, picking bigger cities. But now if we're trying to move back here. Talk to me about the smaller and mid-sized cities in the Rust Belt. They have the houses, but they need to be maybe fixed up. Yeah, no, I think there's tremendous potential. When you think about the assets, they have infrastructure. It may need more investment, but it's there. And they have that wonderful historic housing stock, which is going to be attractive to a lot of folks. And I actually think, and again, to remember this is a long-term trend, that these are the areas I'd be more bullish on in terms of maybe 10 to 50. years from now, we will see population moving back into these areas because affordability is an issue in Central Ohio, right? So not everyone is going to be able to move or should be moving to Central Ohio. Ideally, we're looking at these historic centers of, it needs to be areas of commerce and population that folks need to move back into. And I always, there's some early trends that we can see this starting to happen. I grew up in the city of Hamilton, Ohio, classic deindustrialization city just north of Cincinnati. You know, one of my students is now, former students is now planning director there, and they're having a resurgence in their downtown. They're seeing lots of new investment. And those assets that we all kind of knew were great, and when I grew up, are now being seen as attractive to outsiders. And so they're moving into this space. We see some of this in like Newark, Ohio, if you've seen just reinvestment. So right now, it's these smaller historic areas that are kind of just off of the big urban cores. I could see that spreading out eventually to other cities across the state. And Bart, our previous guest was talking about he used Cincinnati as an example as being one of the first cities in the country to have a climate plan that involves planning for people picking to move to Cincinnati because they have to leave an area like Florida or Louisiana or, you know, for whatever reason, if there's a lot of flooding or that they get priced out. So. So Cincinnati is actually planning for. people to move because of climate change. What do you think of that? It's amazing. I actually flagged the same thing. I said coming in, let's look at Cincinnati. And I think Columbus would do well. I know we have a climate action plan. I know the city met with city officials. I know they're working hard on trying to implement that, but we really need a climate migration plan like Cincinnati has developed. And I think we were talking off air that we'd love as faculty to help in that process. I think there's a lot of factors that go into thinking about.

about how do we plan ahead? I did not grow up in Hamilton. I grew up in Atlanta, so one of the places that was mentioned in the last segment. And I grew up in the 80s and 90s in a city that Everyone was moving there then. That's the time, yeah. Exactly. And one could argue I became an environmental historian because I grew up in that period. I saw these, you know, haze alerts that were telling me my air quality was so bad that I shouldn't go out as a kid in the 90s. And that was the beginning of an awakening of saying, wait a minute, what's happening? And, you know, one of the things I really hope we get right is transportation. I know that was mentioned in the last segment. And I think we have to. to be we're thinking about that i rode on the bike lanes on indianola just recently that have been built in part due to um some new investments in bike infrastructure, but we've got to be moving at a much rapid clip. I know we have the bus rapid transit idea, but I just can see the limitations of not connecting every single in a neighborhood to this network. You can see that there's investment, but there's a lot of pockets that are not going to be included in that plan. So I think as an Atlantaan who saw this, you know, 10, 20 years ago happen, I'm really worried that we've got to think bigger about building some of that infrastructure out. This is All Sides on 89-7 NPR News. We're talking about whether climate migration could end the Midwestern exodus. And we're talking with Bart Elmore, who teaches environmental and business history at Ohio State University, and also with Jason Reese, professor of city and regional planning at the Nolton School of Architecture. So you just alluded to it. And Jason, our first guest, Democratic, the demographic, sorry, the demographic strategist, Bradley Sherman, he is not a fan of bus rapid transit. He said that in the interview. But Columbus is truly all in on this concept. We're really leaning in here. And we have the link us plan. It involves lots of bus rapid transit. Do you think that more people are going to be moving to the Midwest could? Do you think bus rapid transit is a part of the solution? Or do you think, like Brad Sherman was saying, is that we should be leaning into passenger rail? I actually think you probably need both because they're serving different purposes. You know, you also have to think about in terms of particularly transit. investments. Transit is much harder to fund and finance than traditional highways because of the role of the federal government. Federal government's just putting far more money into highway construction than they are into transit investments. Therefore, we have to raise a lot of the money locally to do transit-oriented investment. So that's one conditional factor that is really important because it means we can't necessarily do all things at the same time.

So in a city like Columbus, or I'm going to say in a region like Central Ohio, I think BRT makes sense as a next step. I do agree and must adhere to the real principles of a BRT, which means that not only do you have great stations and folks can get on and off very quickly, but you have a dedicated lane. Because then, you know, if you don't have that element, just as the earlier presenter noted, you're putting buses back into traffic. You're not really seeing the time efficiency. that could benefit. What's important to remember here, too, is this is a critical land use component. So to make BRT work, it means reviving the densities of those neighborhoods all along those corridors. And so that's a piece of the BRT that is often kind of not talked about, but it's a critical element that we, you know, if you look at zoning reform, for example, in Columbus, they were very intentional in targeting those corridors first. because that's going to make the BRT more likely to succeed in that context. I agree. Passenger rail is needed for city-to-city travel here. But that will probably take a different approach to fund. And it's also, again, that's a statewide project and not something that can be driven out of City Hall in Columbus or Cleveland or Cincinnati. Well, but Bart, what the previous guest was saying was rather than bus rapid transit, I mean, he wants to see rails of some sort. So I think he meant like maybe a streetcar going through or a subway system. We did. We got rid of it. So what are your thoughts when you hear someone like that with this national perspective, basically poo-pooing what we're investing in? Well, I think it's a great example to go back to the past and realize we did have a streetcar system. We can do it again. You know, it's interesting to look back at that period where the street car was dismantled in the middle of the 20th century. It was done because it was more modern to have the busing systems and so forth and so on. And I think we've got to watch out for words like that in our own time. Why is it more modern? What makes the bus systems more modern than this great thing that we have? I think the other thing I would note is what buses? Are the electric buses? Are these going to be using compressed natural gas? What are the emissions as a result of that? I mean, these are all things that we've really got to think about. I know that Cota was trying to commit to electric, but then found some troubles there. And that has a really big implication if we're going to be a climate haven, if our AQI, our air quality index, rises to what it was a few weeks ago during those wildfires. It was over 500 here in Columbus. My kids couldn't go outside. I mean, it was that bad. And just for reference, you want a QI that's below 50. So we were 10 times above, right, what we should have, which is why we're a climate ask haven. Yeah. Right? These things, these wildfires and things that are happening around the world, they're going to affect us. We have to act on this. And so when I think about whether it's BRT. or rail, we need to be asking, are they going to be electrified? Are we going to be having emissions from these systems? These are the things we've really got to be bold on, I think, as a city that's going to not just improve our air quality, but send a signal to other cities that you can do this. You can be aggressive and sometimes raise a little bit more money than you might need for the cheaper option to achieve a more resilient end.

Jason, you want to add something before the break? Yeah, I just, you know, I've been here in Central Ohio for about a little over a quarter century. And since I moved here in 1999, we had a high-speed rail proposal on the ballot. in the fall of 1999. It barely lost. We had it revived back in 2002, 2003. Political wins changed in Washington, and we were no longer prioritized for funding. We had a streetcar proposal in the Coleman administration back around 2008 that got really sidetracked because of the national recession. So it's not for effort of trying. We've tried many times. And this is where when we hear the critique of BRT, I like to note there's a political and financial side of this equation that's just as important to kind of factor in than the transportation engineering side. I feel like you just wrote a slogan for Columbus, but at least we're trying. At least we're trying. Our guest, our guest, Bart Elmore and Jason Reese, both OSU professors are staying with us. Coming up after the break, we're going to talk more about the impact of climate change on the Midwestern Exodus, but also we're going to add in affordability. Is the Midwest truly more affordable compared to what? That's when All Sides continues on 897 NPR News.

You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Jarevich. For decades, the Midwest and the Northeast experienced a steady decline in manufacturing jobs and therefore a decline in population. But a confluence of factors from climate change to affordability is bringing residents back. We're looking at the Midwestern exodus and if it is ending this hour. Still with us is Bart Elmore, who teaches environmental and business history at Ohio State University. Thanks again for being here, Bart. Thanks for having me. And also we have Jason Reese, professor of city and regional planning at the Nolton School of Architecture. Thanks for being here, Jason. Thank you. Jason, I wanted to pivot and talk about the affordability. We mentioned it briefly. It's always a part of the conversation. Talk to me about the affordability. The Midwest is obviously more affordable when you compare it to L.A. and New York City. But wages here are also lower than in those cities. So will people move to the Midwest because they can actually afford to buy a house? Talk to me about this area being affordable. Yeah, this is where we have to be real careful because this is one of those relative conversations. Yes. If I'm a home buyer that has a six-figure income, I'm going to get more house in the Midwest than in other parts of the country. If I am a single parent working a job that pays $40,000 a year, Even if I'm in Columbus, I'm going to have a hard time finding affordable housing. And so even in our current situation, we are more affordable. We have a lot of people who are struggling with affordability. And so I say both with terms of Columbus but these other cities, they have to keep their eye on the affordability measures in their community because that can change very quickly. And we've seen that in Columbus in the last five to... 10 years, where our own affordability, this asset that we really leveraged for economic development purposes, is now questionable. And so... You know, there is going to need to be, even though we're more affordable if we're going to stay affordable and accessible, particularly for working families who maybe don't have the assets to buy a home, we're going to have to put public policy and dollars toward that goal. Yeah, Bart, what do you think about when you think about whether or not the Midwest, maybe not just Columbus, but the Midwest in general, is it affordable? Yeah, I think about history. And I think about Cincinnati's plan that you have to plan to ensure it. that everyone who's coming here is going to be given a fair shake and that there won't be discriminatory policies that say that X type of person is going to have access to that neighborhood and other people aren't. You know, if you look back to my city of Atlanta in the era of highway construction and the federal housing administration, there was redlining that essentially allowed this to be, you know, lily white suburban neighborhoods.

And we did not invest in other neighborhoods that were targeted for different communities. And so I think that's the thing we've really got to think through. If you look at the resettlement administration, Green Hills, Ohio, which is just north of Cincinnati, was actually a town that was created by the resettlement administration. Oh, they named it green because they wanted people to come from where the green wouldn't grow. Exactly. And these were green belt cities. The idea was that the houses were actually built in a way where the living rooms were facing the backyard, essentially, so that you would see greenery that was supposed to be this kind of bucolic space. But once again, because of the way that these houses, who gets to live in those houses? Well, it ended up being white, you know, families that were chosen for that. And black Americans were left out of that promise. So I think the biggest thing we've got to do when we think about climate migration policies is ensure that everyone has that fair opportunity to get housing in the community when they come in. That's the biggest thing I think history teaches us. Jason, we talked a little bit earlier about tech companies. So basically, tech companies are choosing cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati to be where their headquarters are instead of Silicon Valley because no one can afford Silicon Valley anymore. And their employees can't afford it. So these new tech startups are picking the Midwest. And then everyone can get paid the tech salary that you expect and buy a house and everything. So what do you think that's going to do to the... the end of the Midwest exodus, you know, people are coming back here to work for these tech companies. Are we going to be a new Silicon Valley in the Ohio Valley, I guess? Yeah, it's an interesting proposition. And certainly we've seen growth in that sector, particularly in central Ohio, that, you know, has been really exponential in the last four to five years. to a degree, but I also want to note, you know, when it comes to these tech investments, how many of them are data centers, which really don't employ a lot of people. And then there are certain kind of side effects of these types of investments. And so I'm told both are coming here. So they are building all these data centers, but then companies are coming? Yes. Which raises the other side of this equation. Certainly we're going to attract folks from outside. But then, you know, are we leveraging? as your previous speaker noted, the great educational assets that we have here to make sure our folks are able to compete for those jobs. Because we also have a lot of folks who are struggling economically in our own community here and could benefit from those types of opportunities. And so hopefully we will be attractive to these outside folks as the tech industry kind of migrates in this direction. But we're also going to create opportunities for our people here now. This is All Sides on 897 NPR News. talking about the possible end of the Midwestern Exodus with Jason Reese, Professor of City and Regional Planning at the Nolton School of Architecture, and also with Bart Elmore, who teaches environmental and business history at Ohio State University. Bart, talk to me about what programs or incentives, local governments, schools, businesses can establish to like,

to rebuild maybe some of these smaller Midwestern cities. We talk about affordability. Maybe if they can't afford Columbus, they could afford the Newark, the Bell Fountain, the, you know, Mary'sville, that kind of thing. Yeah. I think one of the things that community, look, there are things that we have in Ohio that that's Data centers, for example, want that tech companies want. We have clean water. We have certain things that they want. So I think one of the things we have to do is be clear about what we're getting in return. I grew up in a region that sold itself, the South. In fact, there's a book called Selling the South that a great historian wrote. that shows the downsides of providing too many incentives without actually saying, hey, what are you giving to us? What are you bringing to this community? And look at the data centers, for example. A lot of them are actually trying to generate their own, figure out how they're going to generate enough energy to be able to function. A lot of them are planning gas burning plants. Well, the New York Times actually reported that if you look at the proposals for all these gas burning plants in Ohio, Texas, Wyoming, The equivalent of the emissions would be about half of all the passenger vehicles on the roadway today. This is the New York Times just last week. Is that good for Ohio? You know, I think we have to say, well, if you have, if you're going to bring these investments, why not make it green? And putting certain requirements in place to say, look, we want good jobs. We want good business. We want industry, but we want it done the right way. I think what the history of the American South shows is that when you sell yourself too aggressively, you end up with all these costs that end up on the public that you have to. As our last guest was saying, you have to fix years down the road. And so what I hope for Ohio is that we stand up and say, okay, you want to come here. Here's what it means to do business in Ohio. Well, Jason, we're struggling to have state lawmakers come up with laws to regulate data centers because it got out of control too quickly. So can we get there? Is the Midwest the right climate to fix this? What Bart's saying with the greenness needed, they need. lawmakers to do it, right? Yeah. And, you know, I think from a planning perspective, one of the pieces that's really critical there is our communities, because you have to remember in. In Ohio, local government still really dominates in terms of land use control. And they're really kind of the last bulwark against what gets built and what doesn't. Yeah, all the townships in the villages. They're all voting on this. Are they coordinated with each other, right? And if we, are we going to see model regulations come out that those communities can adopt so that everyone's playing from the same playbook? These are the kind of things that are going to need to happen as well as, you know,

at a statewide level, what are we doing with our incentive programs? Do we need to be positioned historically as we've been where, as you said, we're going to incentivize as much as possible because we think we're not as desirable as other parts of the country? Well, the data would suggest that we are desirable now, right? So let's change that orientation. As you say, it's going to be a complicated political situation. But I do think, you know, it's not necessarily saying, you know, we want to stop all this investment. It's saying we need to understand its impact. How do we regulate it so that we benefit the most from the investment that's coming into these communities? We only have a little over two minutes left, so I guess a minute each for the last question. When we were talking with Brad Sherman, our previous guest off the air, he mentioned the concept of a 15-minute city where most people want everything within a 15-minute walk. For each of you, can you just in a minute... Do you think people want a 15-minute walkable city? I think so. If you look at overall public opinion, you look at surveys in terms of people's preferences. People want to have that accessibility. They don't want to be sitting in a car a lot of the time. They want the benefit of active lifestyle. We also have to recognize we have some demographic changes. So our aging population really, you know, maybe wants things closer. We have a younger population that's less likely to want to have their own vehicle. So they would want to take advantage of these things. So, you know, I would say the demographic trends say yes. The question is, is the market and is our regulatory system producing those places? Because there's certainly a market for it. Yeah. Bart, what do you think? Do people want a 15-minute walkable city? Is that the future? I think so. You know, I'll bring it personal. I was driving in Worthington the other day in Columbus, and I just didn't see this driver and kind of pulled out a little bit in front of him. There's still space, but I did a cold, very sorry, you know, didn't mean to. If you're listening, driver, that was me. And, I mean, was just yelling at me. And there was no way to diffuse the situation. And I thought this is the problem with a city that's so oriented towards cars is if we were walking near each other and, you know, I happen to step in his way, excuse me, and we could have that exchange. But I think these walkable cities, they change your culture. They change the way you interact with one another. And I would have loved the opportunity to say, you know, I made a mistake and had that opportunity, but you don't have that in a car-centric situation. So I think we should think about this not just as something that can bring jobs and can, you know, help us in terms of our environmental impact, but it can bring us closer together. And we can see that in communities that have done it. We've been speaking with Bart Elmore, who teaches environmental and business history at Ohio State University. Thanks for joining us, Bart. Thank you. And also Jason Reese, professor of city and regional planning at the Nolton School of Architecture at Ohio State University. Thank you, Jason. Thank you. And this has been All Sides on 897 NPR News. I'm Amy Jarevich.

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