Las Vegas’s First Family Gambles on Downtown, Indoor Agriculture Gets a Boost and More

 
Meet the Goodmans: Las Vegas’ Flamboyant Political Family, Governing
Did you know the Strip — with its high-rolling casinos and debauched dance clubs — isn’t actually within Las Vegas’s city limits? It’s technically on Clark County’s turf. The timeworn battle between city and county is playing out in the Nevada desert, as a husband-and-wife pair who’ve held the mayor’s office for a collective 17 years try to remake the city’s downtown, gambling their future on a performing arts center, a med school and a pro sports team.
High-Rise Greens, The New Yorker
In 2003, Ed Harwood, a 66-year-old inventor from Ithaca, N.Y., sketched out designs for a seemingly impossible idea: a compact vertical farm, where produce could grow without any soil, sunlight or more water than a fine mist. Today, his grow tower has been perfected and adopted by AeroFarms, a company in Newark, N.J., whose indoor agriculture aims to compete with California’s kale, bok choi and arugula farmers.
Did Free College Save This City? Christian Science Monitor
For every graduate of the Kalamazoo, Mich., school system — rich or poor — a group of anonymous donors has guaranteed scholarships to cover the cost of college tuition. The 11-year-old educational experiment, known as Kalamazoo Promise, has revived the district public schools and fostered a college-going culture in this frozen Rust Belt city that’s trying to transition to the digital economy.
Continue reading “Las Vegas’s First Family Gambles on Downtown, Indoor Agriculture Gets a Boost and More”

5 Cities Where Successful Wage Growth Is Happening

For several years after the 2008 market crash, the economic recovery was seen only in corporate earnings statements and consistent job reports. Family paychecks, meanwhile, didn’t keep pace. Average hourly wages rose at an anemic 2 percent from 2010 to 2014 — and that’s not accounting for inflation. Worse, US workers’ pay had lagged behind other indicators for nearly a decade, the result of bloated executive salaries, global outsourcing of jobs and capital investments in mechanization.

But in the last two years, that dynamic has begun to shift. Unemployment bottomed out at 4.6 percent last year (down from a high of 10 percent in 2009), meaning businesses needed to pay more to recruit and retain employees. Last October, wage growth hit a high of 2.8 percent nationwide.

In which cities has the average worker seen the biggest comparative bump in pay, as measured by higher wages and more work hours? (Hint, three are in blue states, two in red, and not one can claim more than a million residents.) Donald Trump’s 2016 victory in the Electoral College revealed the regional inequities, between the coast and the heartland, that divide our country. As a way to bridge those separations, NationSwell dug into the data to find out what drove better pay in these metro areas, offering five methods for the next administration to consider.

Hot-air balloons soar above Balloon Fiesta Park during the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.

5. Albuquerque, N.M.

Population:559,121
Wage growth in 2016:5.70%
Average weekly pay:$745, up from $703

Statewide, New Mexico’s economy has struggled to make a comeback. At the end of 2015, the Land of Enchantment logged 17,300 fewer non-farm jobs than in pre-recession 2007. But after taking a years-long beating (including more than a doubling in meth overdoses), the state’s biggest city, Albuquerque, is starting to show signs of progress.
Historically, the city has relied on federal spending for a slew of jobs at Sandia National Laboratories, which focuses primarily on weapons, and Kirtland Air Force Base. If President Trump pumps money into defense, the city will likely be a prime beneficiary. But reliance on public dollars “is not a growth industry,” noted Jim Peach, a New Mexico State University economics professor, last year.
To capitalize on government investment, the city is trying to establish the high desert as a hub for science and technology companies. They’re sharing technical discoveries from the national labs (and the state university’s flagship campus) with local small businesses. And they’re also hoping to attract more semiconductor manufacturers near Intel’s chip-making facilities in Rio Rancho, a half-hour drive from downtown. The high-paying jobs in those sectors could power Albuquerque back into full recovery.

The new U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis will host the Super Bowl next year.

4. Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minn.

Population:711,790
Wage growth in 2016:5.97%
Average weekly pay:$998, up from $938
In February 2018, Minneapolis will play host to America’s most watched televised event: the Super Bowl, to be held at U.S. Bank Stadium. (St. Paul will host an accompanying winter carnival, featuring a gigantic ice palace, to draw spectators across the river.) The NFL’s imprimatur is just the latest sign that businesses are increasingly eyeing the Twin Cities for development opportunities. “The number one thing is that people who make decisions for business now have a much more positive view of Minneapolis, and look at us for business expansion,” said Mayor Betsy Hodges, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
To prep for the crowds who’ll be streaming into town to watch football, the city is also shoring up a shopping district in the city center, which has been battered by competition from suburban malls and online retailers. At the moment, a Macy’s department store is the last remaining anchor, but a $50 million revival plan for Nicollet Mall promises to make it a “must-see destination in downtown,” said David Frank, the city’s planning and economic development director.
All that new business means more workers are making more money, thanks to a red-hot 3 percent unemployment rate and a recent change in state law. Last August, a raise in Minnesota’s minimum wage went into effect. At $9.50 an hour for large employers, the hike lands the state near the top of guaranteed minimums. And as debate over a citywide standard of $15 per hour becomes the defining issue of this year’s mayoral campaign — Mayor Hodges recently flip-flopped her position to support the wage bump — compensation seems likely to continue trending upward.

A view of downtown Charlotte, N.C.

3. Charlotte, N.C.

Population:827,097
Wage growth in 2016:7.94%
Average weekly pay:$983, up from $905
If the number of new housing units rising across this Southern city is any indicator, people desperately want to move to Charlotte. At the beginning of last year, construction had begun on more than 12,300 units, and another 13,500 more were planned. The buyers? Foreign-born immigrants who’ve made a home in the New South, young millennials (including Villanova grads) who’ve found plenty of jobs to be had in Charlotte’s banking and advanced manufacturing sectors, and former exurbanites moving back to the city core.
“During the Great Recession, the sprawling developments in the exurbs ground to a halt,” Brian Leary, president of a local development firm, told Curbed. So those people moved closer to the central business district and the expanding light-rail system. “People are craving connectivity to each other and experiences, and those places that can deliver the most experiences in an accessible way can command premiums and value over time.”
Charlotte won that appeal despite the controversy over H.B. 2, the so-called “bathroom bill” that forces trans people to use facilities that match the gender on their birth certificate. The state law, which was drafted in response to a local anti-discrimination ordinance in Charlotte, led to boycotts and unknown quantities of lost revenue. A new governor could overturn the controversial legislation, which in turn could accelerate new business.

2. Nashville–Davidson, Tenn.

Population:654,610
Wage growth in 2016:10.07%
Average weekly pay:$904, up from $812

Another Southern city growing at breakneck speed, Nashville has capitalized on its reputation as a destination for creatives to attract newcomers. Seeking out the city’s robust music scene, tourists continue to stream into Nashville. For 70 months in a row, the hordes of visitors broke records for nightly hotel stays; by the end of the rush last October, Nashville set an all-time record, beating out Houston’s 59-month streak. “We have music, a cool brand, Music City Center and Opryland,” plus two convention centers, Butch Sypridon, CEO of Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp., boasted to The Tennessean.

Now that the city is expanding, officials are moving to the next checklist item they must fulfill to stay on an upward trajectory: luring high-wage employers — an important task, given that Tennessee has no statewide minimum wage. To do so, Nashville is trying to keep as many Vanderbilt alumni in town as possible, while also welcoming foreign immigrants.

The population is there to make Nashville a major economic powerhouse, if the city can attract the right firms. ”If we didn’t have 1,500 people moving to town every month, we won’t have the job growth that we’re having,” said Ralph Schulz, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce’s CEO. “Before you had to have the jobs and the population came. That’s not the case anymore. Now it’s workforce, then jobs [follow].” If job openings outpace new residents, expect wages to rocket even higher.

West Loockerman Street in Dover, Del.

1. Dover, Del.

Population:37,522
Wage Growth in 2016:14.05%
Average Weekly Pay:$764, up from $656
Perhaps the most unexpected entrant on the list, the tiny town of Dover, Delaware’s state capital and second largest city, recorded the largest percentage jump in wages in the nation. The payoff is the result of a 10-year comprehensive plan Kent County officials laid out in 2007, which emphasized attracting new companies without losing the area’s farmland and rural charm.
One of the biggest boons to Dover’s economy has been the aviation industry, anchored at Dover Air Force Base. Taking advantage of the military’s need for supplies, the state is building an Air Cargo Ramp that can accommodate large civilian carriers, about the same size as four Boeing 747 planes. The city has also been aided by expansions at several factories, including bra-producer Playtex and food giant Kraft, and a surge in entrepreneurship; in 2015, the dollars loaned to small businesses statewide shot up 156 percent.
On top of that, Dover punches above its weight in attracting some 2 million tourists annually, generating half a billion in revenue countywide. Visitors are drawn by state parks, casinos, NASCAR races and music festivals, like the 80,000-attendee Firefly. “I met a fairly new resident of Kent County a few weeks ago who lives in one of our newer housing developments,” Cindy Small, Kent County’s tourism director, told the local paper. “She mentioned that out of 30 or so homes, 28 of them have been purchased by non-Delawareans. You can bet they were visitors first. They came, they experienced; they relocated.”
It should be noted that Dover’s wages at the beginning of 2016 were, by far, lowest among the top five performers, making it all the easier to notch big gains among its small population. But the town did so even after Delaware upped the state’s minimum wage to $8.25 an hour in June 2015. Even after the change, this booming town’s average pay has continued to rise, perhaps fueled by a still relatively cheap cost of living and an influx of consumer spending.

In Indianapolis, Trash Is Everyone’s Treasure

What good can come from a demolished football stadium? That’s the question Indianapolis twins Michael and Jessica Bricker asked themselves in 2008, when the city slated the RCA Dome, home to the Colts’ NFL team for a quarter-century, to be dismantled.

To their surprise, the Brickers found they were the only ones asking if materials could be reused, rather than dumped. “We are very much in this place in history where architecture feels as disposable as plastic or anything else. We have this sense that once a place is old, it’s used up and just turns to trash,” says Michael. “These huge stadiums, which were all built in the 1970s and ’80s, are not nearing the end of their lifespans but are being replaced anyway. That’s not going to change. We have the opportunity, as citizens, to expect and demand reuse of those buildings as part of the plan.”

After city officials agreed, the twins salvaged 13 acres of waterproof, Teflon-coated fiberglass fabric, which had once stretched across the stadium’s ceiling. With it, they fashioned a series of bags, ranging from zip-up weekenders to clutches, that generated $70,000, essentially building a social enterprise a year before Kickstarter became a household name.

The Brickers invested the proceeds into a new nonprofit, People for Urban Progress (PUP), whose goal would be to introduce upcycling to the city. Calling themselves a “do-tank,” they took on a series of projects, like refurbishing 9,000 bright orange seats left over from the demolition of the city’s Bush Stadium and installing them at bus stops around Indianapolis. They also used some of the leftover fabric from the RCA Dome and built standalone canopies that provide shade in area parks.

PUP’s mission, Michael says, has been to get people thinking about sustainability — a word rarely heard in Indiana a decade ago — from the very beginning of any public-work design. Even better, he adds, is when sustainability intersects with the adrenaline-fueled world of sports, whose big-business spectacles generate a lot of waste. “We’re trying to almost reengineer the whole process,” Michael says. “We’re thinking about these resources through their entire life-cycle and trying to be smarter about how everyone can use them every step of the way.”

Indianapolis, located in a vast, flat expanse of Midwestern lands, doesn’t necessarily have a strong sense of place — nothing like San Francisco’s hilly terrain or New York CIty’s rivers and bays. Growing up there, the Brickers never expected their home would be a hub for smart design initiatives or a thriving arts culture. But as people have moved back to the Hoosier State capital’s urban core in the wake of the Great Recession, there’s been a revival of local brands and some new upstarts like PUP who are making investments in the city. Connected by a cultural trail that loops through downtown and various PUP projects dotting neighborhoods, Indianapolis’s identity feels resurgent.

For other cities admiring how PUP’s creative projects have benefited Indianapolis, the Brickers suggest starting by looking at all architecture as an asset. That includes not just repurposing bricks, steel and wood, but also textiles like firehose fabric, and structures like parking meters and payphone booths. If you’re willing to take on the cause and find designers with a fresh perspective, the Brickers say, you’ll have no trouble figuring out what to do with them.

Homepage photo of PUP messenger bag courtesy of People for Urban Progress

Mental Healthcare Resources Target Communities Left Behind, A Tech Giant Wages War Against ISIS and More

 
Rural America Finally Gets Mental Health Help, Governing
The absence of clinics, therapists and psychiatrists in our nation’s small towns have fueled incarceration, self-medicating opioid abuse and suicide. But developments like telemedicine and integration of mental health checkups into primary care visits have the potential to alleviate the psychic crises causing headaches in sparsely populated counties.
Google’s Clever Plan to Stop Aspiring ISIS Recruits, WIRED
The search engine is trying a new strategy to fight the Islamic State’s aggressive online recruiting campaigns. Rather than creating or hiding content, Google simply redirects traffic to videos featuring Muslim religious authorities debunking ISIS apocalyptic theology and undercover clips showing the devastation for Syrian and Iraqi civilians.
Can a Montana Community Run its Own Forest? High Country News
In 2002, to prevent real estate developers from subdividing 142 acres of lakefront property, locals in one small Montana town pooled their money to buy the land for the community. After financial hardships threatened to put the parcel back on the market in 2014, an under-utilized government fund saved the shoreline, preserving the West’s rugged landscape.
MORE: This Common Sense Program Could Be the Future of Mental Healthcare Nationwide
 

Giving Mickey Mouse an Energy Boost Helps the Environment, How One Neighborhood Transformed Itself from the Country’s Worst and More

 
Want Power? Fire Up the Tomatoes and Potatoes, National Geographic
In Florida, scientists discovered that the tomato can be transformed from a lycopene storehouse into an electrical powerhouse. Considering that the annual surplus in South Florida could power Disney World for three months, is a new type of utility — one that’s fueled by food waste — in the state’s future?
How Cincinnati Salvaged the Nation’s Most Dangerous Neighborhood, Politico
Simply put, in 2009, Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood was the nation’s worst. When city government couldn’t provide a lifeline to the downtrodden area, a nonprofit private development company stepped in. Now, in just seven short years, the community is experiencing a blossoming transformation.
New California Law Could Keep Guns Away from People Like Omar Mateen, Reveal
After a mass shooting tragedy in 2014, the Golden State proved that it’s possible to pass sensible gun legislation. Its gun violence restraining order can prevent someone from purchasing or possessing a firearm for 21 days if law enforcement or a family member is worried they’ll turn violent.
MORE: The Surprising Second Life of Urine

A Problematic Industry Joins the Climate Change Movement, Much-Needed Health Care Reaches the Latino Community and More

 
U.S. Agricultural Secretary Thinks Farmers Can Help Solve Global Warming, Scientific American
Those that work the land inflict some of the worst harm on it. But as a recent report reveals, members of the agriculture community — farmers, ranchers, foresters — are beginning to change their planet-damaging ways. As they reform what they grow and how they grow it means that farmers soon could cease being one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gas pollution.
Students Fill a Gap in Mental Health Care for Immigrants, NPR
For immigrants in need of mental health care, a lack of documentation or insurance often means illnesses remain untreated. Across the nation, understaffed health clinics and universities are joining forces to improve access to services for depression, anxiety and more. Through these partnerships, Master’s and Ph.D. students play a vital role in treating mental illness in the Latino community.
Vermont Becomes First State to Require Drug Makers to Justify Price Hikes, STAT News
Last year, the pharmaceutical industry got a bad rap when Martin Shkreli hiked up the price of an HIV drug by more than 5,000 percent. In response, the Green Mountain state passed a law holding drug companies accountable for price increases. Could this move stunt medical innovation or will it protect citizens from unreasonable costs?

This Easy Fix Is How You Stop Poisoning the Fish in the Gulf of Mexico

There’s a 6,475-square-mile “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. Roughly the same size as Connecticut and Rhode Island, this area located off the Louisiana coast becomes so polluted that it can’t support the fish and shrimp populations that are vital to southern fisherman. While actions by those living in the bayous play a part, the real cause is located 1,000 miles north: Iowa’s golden cornfields, whose runoff is dirtying the Mississippi River and its tributaries, says Dan Jaynes, a research soil scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Laboratory who’s studying ways to decrease the contamination.
While the prairie’s black soil is extremely fertile — roughly 25 million acres of cropland were harvested last year — the former swampland is also excessively moist. “It’s a fairly flat landscape, so water has no place to go,” Jaynes says. That’s why, beginning a century ago, farmers in the Hawkeye State built artificial drainage systems (that consisted of four-inch-wide clay pipes buried a few feet underground; today, perforated, plastic tubing is used) to shunt water into streams.

Installation of saturated buffer along Bear Creek, Iowa.

Today, these small-scale systems add high levels of nitrates (a form of nitrogen) and phosphorous (additives that largely come from fertilizer) to nearby waterways. During the spring, these nutrients fuel algal growth, presenting a health hazard to the many cities like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids that obtain their drinking water from the rivers. (Des Moines’s water utility has filed a controversial federal lawsuit against drainage districts upstream.)
Jaynes has a simple solution to the problem that’s impacting the entire Midwestern Corn Belt, from Ohio to southern Minnesota: just shift the pipes 30 to 50 feet away from the streams to allow the water to percolate through the vegetated land between the fields’ edge and the riverbed. Grasses and soils retain some of the nitrates or send them back to the atmosphere as harmless gas, and in the process, the water’s nitrate levels drop anywhere from two-thirds to zero, according to several pilot projects of the “saturated buffer,” which was built in partnership with Iowa State University. The fix comes at a reasonable cost: ranging from $3,000 to $5,000 and can be installed within a half hour, Jaynes says.
If citydwellers along the Mississippi River and fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico want to see clearer waters, saturated buffers will have to be implemented, along with other land management practices, Jaynes says. The only alternative? “We can get rid of all the corn or soybeans in the area,” he adds, “but I don’t think that’s very practical.”

A House That’s Actually Affordable to Those in Poverty, Stories of Innovation from Coast to Coast and More

 
This House Costs Just $20,000 — But It’s Nicer Than Yours, Fast Co.Exist
Is it possible to build a house that’s cost-effective to someone living below the poverty line? The answer is yes, according to students at Auburn University’s School of Architecture, who worked on the design and construction dilemma for more than 10 years. Last month, they revealed two tiny houses in a community outside of Atlanta that cost just $14,000 each.
How America Is Putting Itself Back Together Again, The Atlantic
As writer James Fallows says, “As a whole, the country may seem to be going to hell.” But as he’s discovered while visiting various towns across America in his single-engine prop plane, there’s actually a groundswell of renewal and innovation already happening — from impressive economic growth in an impoverished area of Mississippi known as the Golden Triangle, to an investment in the Michigan public education system and a creative movement in more than 10 cities where artistic ventures are being celebrated.
Here’s What Happened When This School Made SATs Optional on Applications, Mic
Along with prom and getting your driver’s license, taking the SAT or ACT is a teenage rite of passage. But that’s no longer the case for some college-bound students. In a bold move, George Washington University made standardized test results optional for undergraduate applicants. The positive outcome: A more diverse candidate pool, including a sharp uptick in applications from African-American, Latino and first-generation college students.
 
MORE: Meet the Courageous Man Who Has Housed 1,393 Chronically Homeless Individuals in Utah
 
 

The Remarkable Story of the County That Has Done the Most to Reduce Income Inequality in America

In the immediate wake of the Great Recession, as 4 million homeowners lost their houses to bank foreclosures while risk-taking executives took home $32.6 billion in bonuses, the glaring disparity between rich and poor ignited a debate about income inequality. Occupy tents unfolded in public squares, and the Tea Party protested bank bailouts. Since then, the financial markets have recovered and there’s a decrease in measurable unemployment, but wage disparity continues to capture headlines.
“Millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, and yet all the new income and wealth are going to the top one percent!” Sen. Bernie Sanders declared at the Oct. 13 Democratic debate, a viewpoint that the presidential candidate has voiced for years. Republicans once derided these arguments as “class warfare,” but this campaign season features the populist rhetoric from both parties, with Republican Donald Trump saying that the middle class is “getting absolutely destroyed” at the same time hedge fund managers “are getting away with murder.”
For all the posturing this election season, there’s been little serious discussion about how to effectively reduce inequality or which cities are models of success. With assistance from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, NationSwell dug into the data to identify the municipality that has done the most to reduce inequality since the latest financial downturn. Surprisingly, it isn’t a major city or even a minor one that’s made the greatest strides toward egalitarianism; it is a Midwestern exurb.

The Anson housing development in Whitestown.

A half-hour’s drive northwest of Indianapolis, Boone County, Ind., has reduced the ratio of the top 20th percentile’s earnings compared to the bottom 80th percentile by 23 percent (the largest decline for any American county with more than 50,000 residents), an achievement that stumped Boone County officials. In government and business alike, no one realized the county had become a national leader in reducing inequality, let alone how exactly they accomplished this feat.
Over the last month, NationSwell pieced together the story of how two towns — an upper-crust enclave and its scrappy, younger neighbor — battled for land and altered the course of the county’s growth. There was no redistribution of wealth in this red state, but financial pressure from a statewide tax revolt forced these localities to reinvent themselves or risk becoming ghost towns. Unexpectedly, amidst all the turmoil, the middle class moved in.
The Clark Meadows neighborhood of Whitestown.

Boone County’s evolution over the past decade may read as a bureaucratic string of annexations, civil suits, tax caps and government restructuring, but it’s really a story of how small-town America is redefining itself to attract young Americans. After World War II, the suburbs were a place of radical equality, where cheap subdivisions offered middle-class families a home and a driveway. As time passed, the price of home ownership continued to grow and became unattainable for many. Today, a new model centered on a dense suburban core (theorists also refer to it as New Urbanism, Smart Growth and Transit-Oriented Design) is emerging. This “city in miniature” model is particularly appealing to Millennials, renewing the suburbs as the home for America’s dwindling middle class.
New Whitestone retail center.

Since its founding in 1851, Whitestown was a don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it town without a traffic light. But at the start of this century, the population exploded from 471 in 2000 to 2,867 in 2010, making it the fastest growing city in Indiana for several years running. (The population is estimated to have doubled again in the last five years.) Its vinyl-sided developments were unglamorous, but the bargain prices drew young families who wanted good schools, green space and the urban amenities a short drive away.
Hungry for space to expand, Whitestown began eyeing land to annex, including areas close to its white-collar neighbor, Zionsville. Whitestown went “annexation crazy,” says Marc Applegate, a county commissioner. “[The town] gobbled up an enormous amount of territory,” adds Aaron Renn, an Indiana native and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Maps were redrawn several times until Whitestown’s limits had stretched right up to Zionsville’s outline.
Zionsville residents, for their part, didn’t want anything to do with their neighbors. A bedroom community for attorneys, doctors and mid-level managers who commute to Indianapolis, Zionsville featured quaint brick storefronts lining Main Street. “You could probably have driven down it 50 years ago and think that it doesn’t look that different today,” says town council president Steve Mundy. Its residents worked aggressively to preserve the serenity, prohibiting big-box retailers and setting a strict quota on building permits.
Downtown Zionsville.

The town’s restrictive approach didn’t last long. In 2007, anger over high property tax bills cost 21 Indiana mayors their jobs. Three years later, discontented Hoosiers approved a constitutional amendment capping property tax: residential at one percent, multi-family housing at two percent and commercial at three percent. Zionsville’s budget, which relied heavily on the assessed value of its well-kept estates, suddenly lost much of its revenue and needed to diversify the town to make up for the shortfall. To provide services long term, the town needed commercial development, but didn’t want to destroy its charm in the process. “It’s a tight rope we have to walk,” says Zionsville Mayor Jeff Papa.
Over in Whitestown, town manager Dax Norton says that with the tax caps, “communities had to find ways to grow, because in Indiana now, you’re either growing or you’re dying.” Developers there skirted zoning restrictions by building on land annexed by Whitestown, but within Zionsville’s prized school district.
“Part of what happened, I think, was these developers realized Zionsville is not going to let us come in, but the Whitestown area is very pro-development,” says Renn, of the Manhattan Institute. “That kicked off a free-for-all fight,” a mad civic frenzy over which town owned the land just outside of Zionsville. Whitestown won a lot of the battles, simply by having filed its paperwork first.
Whitestown’s competition and the dire need to fill the town’s coffers broke Zionsville’s long-standing policies, kickstarting development. Pro-growth candidates assumed power on the town council and two nearby rural townships received the opportunity to voluntarily reorganize as special districts within Zionsville. (Opposed by Whitestown, one of the mergers is being disputed before the Indiana Supreme Court.)
Zionsville also competed to attract business. Because of Boone County’s central location in the heartland, many shipping companies place warehouses outside Indianapolis, giving them easy access to half the country within a short truck ride. “The land in-between [Zionsville and Whitestown] is so hotly contested because there’s a huge amount of development along the I-65 corridor,” which links the area to Chicago and the Deep South, says Jamie Palmer, a senior policy analyst at Indiana University’s Public Policy Institute.
Medco is a mail-order pharmacy that pays its 1,300 employees higher wages than the average “picker packer” lifting boxes in a warehouse.

In 2007, Whitestown won a contract with Medco, a mail-order pharmacy and, the following year, an Amazon Fulfillment Center, a facility with seven miles of conveyer belts. To match that, Zionsville courted a FedEx distribution plant that opened last year.
The Amazon Fulfillment Center in Whitestown.

Even during the recession, construction never stopped in Boone County, enticing outsiders to the area. Today, big roadside displays advertise grand openings of new single-family construction. “This year, we’ll break a record on single-family housing with 300 homes,” says Norton. Most will be priced at around $170,000, he notes, astonishingly cheap to most urban city-dwellers.
A series of recent progressive initiatives in Whitestown — non-discrimination protection for sexual orientation and gender identity (passed as the rest of Indiana lurched rightward on “religious freedom”), wider boulevards for bikers known as complete streets and a field of solar panels beside the municipal building — has only bolstered the town’s appeal to young people. “It’s a different kind of place in the ever-fearful-of-change Midwest,” says Norton. “It’s really a Millennial-driven community, and that’s made it pretty interesting. I’m not one of those, but I enjoy it.”
Benders Alley, located off of Main Street in Zionsville.

While Boone County’s ability to draw young, middle-class families may be instructive to other communities, the exurb still has much to accomplish to reduce inequality. Its significant decline only brings it in line with other American communities. Throughout the U.S., the richest Americans make about 4.4 times their poorest neighbors; in Boone County, it’s 4.2. That ratio of inequity, however, fails to express the divide between wealthy homeowners in Zionsville and poor tenants across county lines in Indianapolis. Boone County may be heading towards greater equality, but it could also be gentrifying, forming a homogenous group of families that all bring home high wages.
So far, Boone County has seen only a slight uptick in median income, from $64,961 in 2000 (adjusted for inflation) to $66,023 today, which suggests the county is not simply pricing out poor residents. That fits trends nationwide, says Joel Kotkin, an urban studies fellow at Champan University in Orange, Calif. Extreme wealth disparities exist in urban areas like New York City, he says, but suburbs ringing small and mid-size cities (particularly in the Midwest where land is cheap) offer the best shot at restoring stability to the middle class.
Zionsville’s Main Street.

With Americans, in general, preferring single-family homes and a car, “all of the stuff about the death of the suburbia is overblown,” Renn explains. The major question today is not whether suburbs will survive, but how. “When they get old, [suburbs] have to reinvent themselves in the same way cities did.” The growth in Zionsville and Whitestown — prompted largely by the need for higher tax yield — serves as a model for how diversifying a graying, upper-middle-class population and reinventing a place where nothing much had happened since the post office opened in 1853 can do just that.
Boone County is still, on the whole, a rural county, primed for denser growth in its towns over the next decade. If anything, the boom has just begun.

America’s Heartland: Where Innovation Is Taking Root

If Anheuser-Busch, the brewing company based in St. Louis that’s known for Budweisers and Clydesdales, held a hackathon, attendees would probably dream up the next big app for beer lovers, while overlooking the areas in real need of disruption, like water optimization.
That’s the thinking of Terry Howerton, CEO of the Chicago-based incubator TechNexus. Howerton joined Noah Lewis, managing director of GE Ventures, and Ting Gootee, Chief Investment Officer of Elevate Ventures at last month’s SXSW panel Reinventing America: Betting Big on the Heartland, which was moderated by Paul Noglows, executive producer of the Forbes Reinventing America Project. The conversation between investors making big bets on innovation in the Midwest was part of the Rise of the Rest road trip celebrating entrepreneurship across America.
Here, three important takeaways:
The Midwest is the next Silicon Valley.
The region has a higher density of Fortune 500 companies than anywhere else in the world, accounting for 19 percent of the country’s GDP, yet it receives just 5 percent of venture capital funding — making it a virtually untapped market that’s ripe for innovative thinking. “I really do believe we are going to solve the bigger problems – water, energy, healthcare, transportation. It’s not going to be about the next taxi app or the next Meet Up,” Noglows said.
The middle of the country isn’t lacking in entrepreneurial success stories.
For instance, ExactTarget, an email and mobile marketing technology company, was sold in 2013 to Salesforce for $2.5 billion. The panelists explained how co-founder and CEO Scott Dorsey, started ExactTarget in Indianapolis not only because that’s where he wanted to raise his kids, but also because employee loyalty was stronger there than in Silicon Valley, where the vast majority of his competitors were based.
But, there’s still big challenges preventing the Midwest from becoming an entrepreneurial hub.
The lack of direct flights, and venture capitalists being unwilling to deal with a layover or possible connection delay. To illustrate what a big deal this is, Noglows described how, at The Innovation Summit hosted by Forbes last year, the Indiana secretary of commerce got a standing ovation after announcing a new direct flight from San Francisco to Indianapolis.
 
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