The Midwesterner: Blogging the Global Midwest

The Politics of Nice

We're told that this is the era of partisan politics, of politics as war, of Tea Parties and talk radio ranters, of Democrats and Republicans shouting at each other across a bottomless pit -- all noise and no conversation, all heat and no light. All the commentators and pundits and bloggers say this is the case, so it must be true.

Except that I'm having trouble, in my travels around the Midwest, finding anything of this partisanship beyond an echo. I know there are Republicans and Democrats and libertarians (and maybe a Socialist or two) out there. The problem is that I can't tell one from the other.

I'm sure they're steamed up as folks anywhere about federal budget deficits and health care and the war in Afghanistan. But on the issues of real importance to the future of the Midwest -- education, economic development, high-speed rail, farming, venture capital -- most of the talk is bipartisan. This bipartisanship may break down over taxes. Otherwise, there's no Republican position or Democratic position -- just a broad agreement on what our problems are and, often, what we need to do about them.

Brookings and the Midwest

In its 2006 report, "The Vital Center," the Brookings Institution in Washington contributed mightily to the discussion on what ails the Midwest as a region. Now a major new Brookings report, "The State of Metropolitan America" seems to call that regional concept into question.

This new report is must reading for anyone concerned about American cities, Midwestern and otherwise. One of its conclusions is that a few Midwestern cities are economic oases, doing relatively well despite overall regional decline. But a close study shows that Midwestern cities and their problems remain unique, alas, and the regional approach still holds.  

(For a different take on this, see a typically intelligent and provocative posting by Aaron Renn on www.urbanophile.com. Renn stresses the differences between cities that all carry the "Rust Belt" label: he's right, of course, even though stressing the differences can defeat a serious attempt at a regional policy.) 

The Real Challenge at Illinois

A native Iowan named Michael Hogan has just been named the new president of the University of Illinois, replacing the ill-starred B. Joseph White, who was driven from office by an over-blown furor over admissions. Hogan will need a lot of luck and the hide of a rhino, for reasons that the dust-up over Joe White made clear.

Hogan's jurisdiction includes the three U of I campuses in Champaign-Urbana, Chicago and Springfield. But the problems he faces affect every state university in the Midwest. They are short-term and long-term both, and the solutions include both some tactical cost-cutting now and a total strategic rethinking of the relationship between the university and its state.

Basically, at a time when higher education is more vital than ever, each Midwestern state is cheaping out its universities. If Hogan's struggles are shared by other university presidents, the sheer outrageousness of Illinois politics guarantees that the spotlight will shine particularly on his success or failure.

The Deniers of Globalization

I was up in Madison about a week ago, to give a lecture at the University of Wisconsin. At first, I thought that the folks at UW must be in trouble if they needed a shoe-leather journalist to tell them about globalization and its impact on the Midwest. But when I talked with some professors, I realized I should have got there sooner.

What I heard was, basically, that there's no such thing as globalization or a global economy. Instead, what's really happening, I was told, is that people with the most education and the most skills are getting the good jobs. If everyone else is losing out, it's pretty much their own fault -- not the fault of the economy itself. Because of that, there's not much we can do about it, except to encourage these laggards to get more skills and education.

On top of that, what's happening in the Midwest is said to be really no different from what's happening in the rest of the world. And besides, economies have gone up and down over history: if we're in a bit of a dip now, not to worry, it will all come right in the end.

This argument tends to come from classical economists and, to a lesser degree, some business circles. It strikes me as wrong-headed but dangerous, in that it misdiagnoses what's going on, so gets the policy response wrong, too. When this happens, the Midwestern recovery becomes even more far away.

The Density Debate

Raum Emanuel, the White House chief of state and Chicago mayor wannabe, was in town late last month for the Richard J. Daley Global Cities Forum, which brings mayors from around the world to discuss problems of modern cities. One thing that Emanuel said caught my attention -- that the workable city of the future will be a dense city, with less sprawl and more people living and working in the core.

This issue of urban density has received a lot of attention recently. Some cities, like New York or Chicago, have an increasing number of people living and working downtown: in other words, are becoming more dense. Other cities are more spread out, less dense. This includes relatively booming Midwestern cities like Indianapolis, Omaha and Columbus, and troubled cities, like Detroit and Buffalo.

Many urban thinkers say that density is the key to a global city. Modern communications, like the Web, theoretically erases distance: supposedly, you can move to some mountainside, where the air is pure and the traffic non-existent, and stay in touch just fine with the rest of the world. But these thinkers say a globalizing world doesn't work this way. They say that the people who run this world need more information than they can get from their computers. These people need the latest information, the tips on what's going to happen tomorrow -- and they can only get this face-to-face.