Post No. 650: Blogging as a vocation, or whatever this is

Hickok Hall at Coe College, where your humble
and mostly retired blogger wrote this post

I've been out of full-time teaching for two years now, which has left me with more time to read and write. This is a good thing! I write a lot--journals, songs, letters, blog posts. I seem to need to write, and I am grateful to you for reading and responding.

Blogging on Holy Mountain is what passes for work in my life these days, judging from the time I spend doing it as well as thinking about it when I'm not doing it. Sometimes, like now for example, I return to the academic building where I've had an office since 1990 to do this work. 

What keeps me going, besides an apparent compulsion to write out my thoughts, is the sense that this is a meaningful way for me to contribute to important discussions about the state of our world. The rewards are when I write myself into a better understanding of things and/or when my writing stimulates thoughtful responses from others. I don't need money, but I do occasionally think about moving to a hotter platform like Substack.

Last week in Christian Century, Texas pastor Mike Gaventa wrote about a "crisis of vocation" in the mainline Protestant church. Actually, the phrase he used was "vocational theology," which focuses on the language we use to talk about vocation, but he had plenty to say about vocation itself. His article rang some bells, even though (a) he used vocation in its typical sense of a chosen career, and (b) he was writing specifically about careers in the church. 

Gaventa begins by quoting theologian Frederick Buechner, who wrote in 1973 that "the place God calls you do is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." He suggests this fundamental truth might be amended by: 

1. distinguishing the call from "market-based assumptions about value and social status"
2. seeking "the well-being and best interests of the whole body," often in opposition to the status quo
3. enabling "the doing of gladless work," of which his repeated example is cleaning toilets
4. continued personal discernment, "because God is never done making any of us"

Is it possible to find work that is personally meaningful, but also brings you into community with God and your fellow human beings? (It would be good if it also had decent pay and benefits.) All work, even messy work, has dignity under those conditions.  In the 2023 Wim Wenders movie Perfect Days, Koji Yakusho plays a man who cleans public toilets in Tokyo. At first he seems to have a well-ordered life and a beatific attitude that is almost godlike, though in time we find there is dissatisfaction and loneliness and a backstory. Of course, when is there not? 

Perfect Days trailer (1:44)

While at graduate school in the 1980s, I regularly participated in the Wesley Foundation at the university, and for a while served on the church's Pastor-Parish Relations Committee. I remember that the associate pastor in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Wesley Foundation had in her job description the charge to help students identify a sense of mission in their chosen careers. I've often thought about that since, that any career can be a vocation if you consider how you might use your work to serve God. I've also thought, during my career as a college faculty member, that institutions under financial stress must make compromises to sustain themselves, which sometimes call the mission itself into question. I've wondered, in times of high levels of doubt, whether it might be better to make money however you can, and seek a vocation in your off hours.

Well, now I'm in a position where all my hours are off hours. There's a version of retirement in the mass media that makes it sounds like second childhood. But it's not hard to conceive of an alternate version that is a vocation or something much like it, focused on community not financial gain and involving continued personal discernment. And, at least on campus, the skilled and reliable Nick cleans the toilets!

Top posts of the 2020s

Pandemic hearts, April 2020

1. "The Hearts of Cedar Rapids," 11 April 2020
2. "Black Friday Parking 2021," 26 November 2021
3. "The Kind of President Joe Biden Could Be," 3 July 2020
4. "Hy-Vee is a Symptom of a Deeper Problem," 23 May 2024
5. "Eight Things That Make Me Proud in Cedar Rapids," 27 June 2025
6. "What Should Go into Brewed Awakenings?" 31 July 2020
7. "Move More Week Diary," 10 October 2022
8. "Even a Pretty MedQuarter Isn't Right," 12 September 2023
9. "More New Less Bo?" 4 July 2022
10. "Project 2025 and Our Common Life," 19 August 2024

As yet undiscovered posts of the 2020s

Mike Maas, John Korkie, and Carlis Faurot (not pictured)
perform at Maple Syrup Festival

1. "Maple Syrup Time Again," 30 March 2026
2. "Thinking Positively About Marjorie Taylor Greene," 25 November 2025
3. "Riding the Districts 2024," 10 June 2024
4. "Book Review: Palaces for the People," 6 July 2026
5. "Roll Down Justice: MLK Day 2026," 20 January 2026
6. "Train Horns," 6 October 2025
7. "Book Review: City Limits," 5 June 2024
8. "My Grand Day Out: Iowa River Landing and the Peninsula Neighborhood," 9 June 2026
9. "Subterranean Chicago," 9 December 2025
10. "10th Anniversary Post: What's Up in Uptown Marion?" 8 January 2026

SEE ALSO: "Blogging in a World Gone Backwards," 20 June 2025

10th Anniversary Post: The Future of the Suburbs

We've always viewed our nation as a place with unlimited land and natural resources.--
PETE SAUNDERS

Ten years ago, I was gearing up to teach the next generation of first-year Coe College students about urbanism. Maybe that's why Holy Mountain was full of urbanist basics like cities blowing their stash on big amenities, gentrification, and suburban sprawl. My post on suburbia was full of assumptions that now seem very much of that time. Following Leigh Gallagher's The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream is Moving (Portfolio/Penguin, 2013) I expected suburbia to be transformed by increasing economic inequality, consumer preferences for urban living, environmental issues, fiscal issues, corporate clustering, and secular declines in urban crime. 

When I revisited the topic six years later, those assumptions already looked dated. "Since I wrote [the 2016 post], the return to the city appears to have ebbed; it's early to judge, but it's certainly not proceeding at the pace of 2005-2015 (Frey 2022, Cortright 2020). Meanwhile, American society has been shaken by a series of earthquakes" including the Trump administration, Black Lives Matter protests, the pandemic, altered workplaces, economic changes, and climate disasters. There was a trend of suburbs adopting urbanist elements like central squares, small businesses, and bike trails.

Today I read two essays on suburbia, which is indeed transforming, in some places, but very much maintaining its preeminence in American geography. Bill Fulton (2026), an urbanist I admire but not enough to pay for his Substack, answered a question from someone in Texas about the Dallas metropolitan area, which is growing by leaps and bounds, even as "Downtown Dallas specifically is sucking wind" (questioner's wording). This is not what we were asking ten years ago, when McDonald's was moving its headquarters from Oakbrook to Chicago, and CRST moved from the edge of town to downtown Cedar Rapids (Cortright 2016, Smart Growth America 2015). There may be more to this behind the paywall, but the discussion of metro Dallas sounds like we're back to the 1980s, and 2005-2015 never happened.

Addison Del Maestro (2026) examines the housing crisis from the perspective of high-demand, high-price cities. More people seem to want to live in the hottest cities than can fit there, which drives prices up, making them unaffordable. While it's also true that "lots of smaller cities and towns have also seen price increases, because basically all communities pulled back on housing production for a few decades," some cities have features or cultures that attract a disproportionate percentage of the mobile population. I conclude that, while San Francisco prices spiral--their price-to-median-income ratio is over 10!--those who can't afford them retreat to the suburbs, somewhere or other. In Cedar Rapids, you could buy a downtown condo for $400K, or you could pay half that for something 15 minutes' drive away. So, you get some of the amenities of urban living at an affordable price. Note that Del Maestro is still assuming consumer preference for urban amenities.

Pete Saunders (2026), however, argues consumer preferences for new construction are even stronger than those for urban living. He cites a study by economist Kenan Fikri showing that the Economic Innovation Group's measure of the most prosperous neighborhoods--measured a variety of ways, notably not including taxable value per acre--shows the most prosperous are also the newest. Saunders reflects:

Historically, I understand why Americans have always favored new over old. We've always viewed our nation as a place with unlimited land and natural resources. We have a residential and commercial development investment structure that adheres to the same philosophy that bank robber Willie Sutton used when asked by a reporter why he robs banks: "Because that's where the money is." We can go anywhere. We can do anything. We've put no limit to our desires.

Does it matter where people choose to live? Well, yes it does. This is a blog about public policy, though, not individual ethical choices, and I'm not here to argue that people should never choose to live in low density areas. (Contrast that stance with that of Ross Douthat, cited in Del Maestro's post, who wants to "break up" existing high-demand cities, where it should be said a lot of people also live.) But we should not ignore the social costs of sprawl, particularly on municipal finances and the natural environment (but also community feeling and physical fitness). The future of suburbia seems strong; but will it prove adaptable to big changes coming?

Saunders, again:

In a nation that's prospered with the expansion of suburbia and the Sun Belt, what happens when they feel a tinge of obsolescence? When the five-bedroom, 4,000 square-foot McMansion can't be sold because the nation is getting older and has smaller households? We'll see.

If experience is any predictor, it won't spur a rush back to central cities, but rather to a new version of suburbs. And the most vulnerable will, again, be left in the dust, not to mention the natural world.

ORIGINAL POST: "The Future of the Suburbs," 18 July 2016

SEE ALSO: "The Future of the Suburbs (II)," 8 August 2022. Compare the current versions of the American Prairie Project...

house (Source: drhorton.com)

townhouses (Source: drhorton.com)

...with what they were showing four years ago:

(Source: cedar-rapids.org)

...though even then, to quote Daniel Herriges (2020), "What would you even walk to?"

Book review: Palaces for the People

 

Eric Klinenberg at CNU34

Twenty-first century social infrastructures are already reviving civic life in nations across the planet: public plazas in low-lying cities that double as massive water storage systems during extreme weather events; massive levees and berms that masquerade as bike paths and parks. Americans should have all these things. (Klinenberg 2018: 293)

Eric Klinenberg, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (Broadway, 2018), 293 pp.

(7/3/2026) There is supposed to be a theory of human evolution where we humans have since hunter-gatherer days differed in our response to strangers. Some see strangers as inherently dangerous, a threat to our precarious food supply; others see strangers as bringing welcome variety, so we could trade lunches or at least hear new jokes. Both of these perspectives are adaptive--some strangers are dangerous--but decades of auto-centric development has left us with a lack of places to encounter strangers in low-stakes, non-threatening ways. The results include an epidemic of loneliness, physical unfitness, and vulnerability to violent crime, homelessness and climate catastrophes. 

Eight years after the publication of Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg began his keynote address to the Congress for the New Urbanism in Bentonville, Arkansas, last month, with the question: What has happened to the fabric that supports community life? He urged his listeners to "make every project you do work as social infrastructure," whether it's a playground or something less obviously connected, like flood control. We should also fund public libraries, a lot more than we currently are.

Klinenberg grew up in Chicago, and was just about to start graduate school when the deadly 1995 heat wave struck the city. The factors that affected who survived and who didn't, and the factors affecting the geographic distribution of mortality, inspired his field research, and eventually his first book, Heat Wave (University of Chicago Press, 2002). He continues to ask: If sudden natural disasters, as well as the slow corrosive effects of loneliness and despair, have predictable effects, "What conditions in the places we inhabit make it more likely that people will develop strong or supportive relationships and what conditions make it more likely that people will grow isolated and alone?" (2018: 6)

Social infrastructure: The Union (young adult room), 
Cedar Rapids Public Library

Social infrastructure is defined as "the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact," creating the context for individual-level relationships of all levels of intensity. It can take many forms--public institutions, open spaces, privately-owned establishments--but the common element is "people are welcome to congregate and linger" (16). His first example is public libraries (ch. 1), which "do all kinds of unexpected things for surprisingly large numbers of people... by providing free access to the widest possible variety of cultural materials to people of all ages, from all ethnicities and groups" (37). He describes his visits to the New Lots and Seward Park branches in New York City, where he sees the elderly, teenagers, the unhoused, and immigrants in places where they can find meaning and encounter other people. 

Chalkboard in The Union:
The youth have something to say

Chapter two argues social infrastructure is useful for improving public safety, where outcomes of long-term policies in Philadelphia "suggest that place-based interventions (fixing up vacant and abandoned properties, planting trees and grass) are far more likely to succeed than people-based projects" like tougher criminal sentencing and cracking down on petty crime (70).

Chapter three starts at elementary school, spends most of its time at college, and then goes back to the library. Any of these places can serve as community gathering spaces, but that doesn't happen automatically; they also can fail by putting up barriers or designing for institutional efficiency.

School playgrounds can be community gathering spaces,
but only if they're unlocked

One big social change since the publication of this book is that the number of people living on the streets has increased by 50 percent, which may affect the real or perceived ability of the community to gather in these types of spaces.

Chapter four focuses on the public health impacts (opioid addiction, food deserts, isolation especially among the elderly and poor) of glaring failures of social infrastructure. Chapter five highlights the role of sports facilities and teams in bringing together people of different backgrounds, which might be a major reason racists fought so strenuously to keep beaches and pools segregated (and why "boys in girls' sports" is such a potent argument today). The epilogue points out the limits of social media, and other billionaires' moonshots, in doing what simple contact can achieve.

Chapter six on climate change is an extension of the argument. Incredibly, as I write this eight years after this book was published, with heat domes over much of the northern hemisphere, widespread fires and flash flooding, the crew in charge of the American national government still insists there's nothing to see here. Even in 2018, it was undeniable that (a) the climate is changing, (b) its effects fall most heavily on those at the margins of society, and (c) we're going to have to build or rebuild a lot of our infrastructure in order to prepare for this. 

Social infrastructure: The McGrath Amphitheatre,
park and concert venue and flood protection

Klinenberg makes the case for making the new physical infrastructure work as social infrastructure as well, as had been planned along the FDR Drive in New York City:

The berms would block and absorb storm surges when necessary, but their everyday function, as parklands and recreational areas for inhabitants of an especially gray and unpleasant part of an especially gray city, is at least equally as important.... Deployable walls, camouflaged as a series of murals that hang from strong hinges on the ugly underside of the FDR Drive, are another key part of the proposal. Most of the time, the structures, which will be designed by local artists, operate as decorative ceiling panels that enhance the experience of walking beneath the highway, which, lacking good alternatives, thousands of residents do each day. (2018: 202)

Klinenberg makes a strong argument for urbanist design. Loneliness and all its ill effects, physical fitness, political polarization, and vulnerability to crime and climate can all be traced to the lack of social infrastructure. In his 2026 talk, he said that if communities design, build, maintain and program it, democracy and civil society will benefit, and there exists a "palpable sense of possibility" in this moment in history, especially among the young. We surely can do with more public libraries, playgrounds, and plazas (with shade for sure!), if they're done right. The alternative, as he said in Bentonville, is "we are all more likely to hunker down in private places."

(Source: crownpublishing.com)

Pete Saunders, "Preparing for the Climate Migrants," Corner Side Yard, 2 July 2026

Angie Schmitt, "Ross Chapin on How the 'Pocket Neighborhood' Can Address Loneliness," Love of Place, 24 June 2026

Book review: The Space Between

 

Source: bakeracademic.com

Eric O. Jacobsen, The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment (Baker Academic, 2012), 297 pp.

If Jesus's "dwelling among us" means that he lives as we typically do, he would most likely be living in a subdivision at least a few miles from where he might interact with people in a quasi public setting--like a shopping mall or a grocery store. In this case, Jesus would need to own and operate some kind of automobile simply to have the kind of diverse interaction with people that we see him having in the Gospels... Rather than asking, "What would Jesus drive?" I want to ask, "Why must Jesus drive?" (Jacobsen 2012, pp. 207-208)

(6/18/2026) I first read Eric O. Jacobsen's The Space Between in 2015, after hearing him interviewed by Chuck Marohn on the Strong Towns podcast. (That interview is here, and a subsequent appearance is here.) Dr. Jacobsen, who has been senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church (ECO) in Tacoma, Washington, since 2007, offers a good introduction to urbanist ideas from a communitarian perspective that is accessible to any reader. It is even more pertinent for his fellow Christians, for whom urbanism is presented as how we live our earthly lives as God intends.

While I've employed his ideas frequently since then, particularly when I would write about the religious architecture awards that used to appear annually in Faith and Form, I have never done a systematic review of this outstanding book. I am rectifying that now.

Dr. Eric O. Jacobsen (from fpctacoma.org)

Jacobsen begins by asserting the core importance of the built environment, which he defines as "the physical location and features of the places where you live, work, worship, and play and the way that the various places in your day relate to one another" (pp. 11-12). We should notice these features, he argues, not just move mindlessly through them on our way to some place from some other place. We should ask ourselves: "Who thought this space through, and what can you discern about their values as you interact with it?" (11). How people and stuff interact in a particular place over time--what he calls enacted space (17)--matters for our experience of community. It matters to a unified kingdom approach to Christian life, in which every human activity, not just the churchy stuff, "can be done in a way that is God-honoring" (21).

Before we get to the urbanism in Parts II and III, Jacobsen presents a sort of theology of the individual in Part I, "Orientation," albeit includes some good pictures of streets by way of example. We are human bodies (ch. 1) in specific places (ch. 2), and are meant to be in loving community with others, not autonomous individuals (ch. 3). Community means "the actual human community in which she has found herself" (89), including both voluntary (church, club, friend group) and geographic (anyone in your immediate proximity) communities, but it's the latter community is too easy to neglect.

The boundedness of place has been an important element in relational development. We know one another more deeply when proximity forces us to interact on a regular basis. The contemporary ease by which we can move from one place to another has tended to pull us further apart from one another, rather than bring us closer. (57-58)

People are bound to fall short of our ideal vision of community because of human sinfulness, so community requires grace. It also requires time, because "we cannot buy community" and "we cannot even build community" (100), because community only happens after sustained engagement. And it requires wisdom, the embedded sort of wisdom that evolved institutions contain, not sudden bursts of seemingly rational efforts to remake those institutions. Hence, urbanism good, modernism not so much (ch. 4, esp. pp. 109-118). Missoula, Montana, was saved from modernist overhauling because it was unable to afford it, and now it's glad it stayed the way it was (pp. 90-92).

This traditional block of downtown Bentonville, Arkansas, is chock full
of "thresholds" connecting buildings with the outdoors

Part II, "Participation," gets into how the built environment affects our lives and life choices. Families become more isolated, both from relatives and from neighbors (ch. 5). Churches (ch. 7) used to be embedded in their surrounding neighborhoods, with doors open to the street, and sometimes served as community monuments; today's insular churches are set away from the street, accessible by large parking lots.

Chapter 6, "Politics," talks about how all this matters for the public realm, beginning with the ongoing skirmishes between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses in 1960s New York City. Jacobs stood for civic virtue as opposed to top-down power for power's sake. "Civic virtue can be thought of as a measure of a person's care for the public realm combined with the local knowledge, organizational skills, and courage necessary to effect positive change in that realm" (159). Any of those four aspects is difficult to muster when the built environment is as dependent on automotive transportation as much of America is today. In this context, he discusses the problems of functional zoning, urban renewal, and visionaries like Le Corbusier. He approvingly quotes from the theoretical final chapter of Jane Jacobs's Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which she argues that cities are problems of "organized complexity," much like human bodies. 

This tells us much about how Jacobs understands transformation to take place among people and practices in the city. She sees in ordinary cities a form that is basically good and assumes the ability of residents to enact a kind of self-repair. The city and its neighborhoods occasionally need outsider intervention to fulfill this potential, but for the most part what they need is less rather than more government intervention. (173)

Modernist architect Rem Koolhaas is introduced as a foil to Jacobs, though I have to admit I like the Seattle Public Library. 

Hudson Street, New York City,
where Jane Jacobs lived between 1947 and 1968

In Part III, "Engagement," Jacobsen uses a theological model called critical correlation to analyze our relationship with the built environment. I'm not a theologian, but I feel I was able to follow the argument. He reframes discussions of sustainability away from voluntary abstinence to seeking to achieve good goals for all (ch. 9): human thriving, environmental stewardship, and social justice. These goals can and do conflict in application (see the graphic from Scott Campbell on p. 236), but they are all served by joint efforts by urban communities rather than individual withdrawal. A sense of place (ch. 10) where one belongs is inextricable from one where strangers can become known--in this context he gives a good capsulation of Ray Oldenburg's third place paradigm (pp. 245-246)--which too turns out to be an obligation for Christians and Jews (cf. Deuteronomy 10:17-19, Exodus 23:9ff.). The chapter concludes with a discussion, from several points of view, of the role of beauty in our places.

Jacobsen's book provides an introduction to urbanist ideas for Christians and Jews, rooted in the familiar language of the Bible. For non-religious urbanists, he points to the possibility of cooperation, giving a view of religion that is different from that propounded by the loudest Christian voices out there. For everyone, he provides a second look at our surroundings that we may have taken for granted all our lives, and to consider why auto-dependency may not be serving us well.

Jackson Boulevard, Chicago

What is the future of Iowa's small towns? (II)

The lives we should all be living:
"Texas Two-Step," a movie on the Hallmark Channel,
offers romance and country music in a small town third place
(swiped from hallmarkchannel.com)

(6/16/2026) In my last post, I noted the reputation of the 1990s TV series Friends has as a contributor to the "back to the city" trend earlier in this century, and wondered not only whether that trend has ebbed, but where today's friends are leading. Hannah Nuss, an entrepreneur and speaker at the recent EntreFest put on by NewBoCo, suggested we might spend some quality time pondering an infamous theme of made-for-TV romance movies: the young woman in the big city returning to her small town roots and finding true love and entrepreneurial happiness.

Hannah Nuss presents at EntreFest
(Outrageous laptop borrowed from Robbie Nesmith)

Nuss, of Denver, Iowa, is founder of a shop and a publishing company, both of which are called Local. She cited small town/rural advantages such as low startup costs, low rents, "super-low" cost of living, neighborly culture, and a small enough population that word of mouth spreads faster. She argues that the death of rural Iowa is a "false narrative people accept," and that "entrepreneurship is here" along with the happy endings of all those romance movies where the heroine chooses love over the big city.

Delaney Howell-Goth on stage at the Englert Theater

Also at EntreFest last week, two other female entrepreneurs from small towns touted advantages for business and economic development. Marketer Delaney Howell-Groth (AgCulture Marketing), who farms with her husband near Rhodes, Iowa, said women entrepreneurs are already active enough to create more than half of all jobs created in small towns. Even more people could be shown the way--or the way back, if they've already left--if there were a supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem providing access to resources, training, and knowledge, which is what the conference she started, She Creates Rural, aims to be.

Stephanie Grutz presents at EntreFest

A third business owner, Stephanie Grutz, mostly talked about her personal journey, but has just moved the headquarters of her healthcare businesses from Dubuque to Peosta, in part because she lives there, but also because she wants rural residents to have access to the types of therapies more commonly found in larger cities.

The river that ran through these three presentations was the contrast between an overwhelming big city full of action and people and wealth and the perception (illusion?) of economic opportunity, against a small arena with less wealth and fewer people, but a less frantic pace, and a chance for stable and "deep relationships" with the people you do encounter. A smaller, less crowded stage allows a person to be impactful and known. 

Both the movie plot and the death-of-rural paradigm rely on stereotypes, of course, which however exaggerated also reflect some important truths. Lyz Lenz (2026) sees the same phenomenon at work in the popularity of Ballerina Farm, a Utah farm, store, and social media phenomenon created by Hannah Neeleman, a self-styled "trad wife." Lyz notes that the women interviewed by The New York Times "don't want to be Hannah Neeleman, exactly. What they want is a glimpse at an easier life." She continues:

They all seem very aware of what must go on behind the scenes to raise and school all those children while building a business empire and staying thin and breaking bread. But it's that idea of something simple and easier.... A nice husband, a bit of land, some chickens, and some kids? Isn't that so much easier than this modern world, where you sit at a computer and create value for a company that is actively plotting to sell your flesh to AI?

Yes, they're cute, but my laptop smells better
© Copyright Evelyn Simak and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License.

Of course the trad wives and romance movies are selling fantasy, just like Friends, whose characters had an unbelievable Upper East Side lifestyle considering they worked at a coffeeshop.

If the rural young are hearing messages that they must leave to thrive, as our speakers suggested, those messages are landing for a reason. I'm not from a small town, but I'm from a state where small town representatives have run the government for years. And the messages they are bringing from their towns to the state in legislation and executive action pulsate with resentment. They snarl at immigrants, they snarl at transgendered people, they snarl at people who are concerned about the environment. If you are a young person who is different, or seeks a different truth, or whose mind is not slammed shut, these sorts of messages are not encouraging you to do anything but flee.

Back to reality: In a world with only two alternatives, corporate big city overstimulation or quiet old white small town, choosing either is going to be painful, because you'll be required to give up something you value. But are there really only two alternatives? More Americans live in suburbs than any other type of place. I grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago, with great schools and a big public library. Does no one dream of living in a suburb? When I go back, everything's different and no one knows me. Maybe not.

Prince Street, 2018: Boston's North End neighborhood
is urban without being noisy and frantic

It may be that in the contrast of extremes can be found there's a combination of attributes many Americans desire in their places but have difficulty finding: walkable neighborhoods, deep relationships, a variety of economic opportunities, and a variety of people with interesting perspectives. A few small towns seem to have achieved this, as have a few urban neighborhoods. But the more we as a country rely on cars to get us anywhere, and low prices at big-box stores to get us by, those places will continue to be hard to find, or to build. 

Water Street, 2013: Decorah is small but has 
a great commercial street an easy walk from residential areas

Small towns that can apply urbanism, and celebrate diversity and inclusion, may find themselves the objects of a lot of people's desires. And that, along with the positive examples and mentoring offered by people like our three speakers, would do wonders for their entrepreneurial ecosystems. And "big" cities that create some real neighborhoods will find they too can ride out whatever fantasies the media are selling us, even if their residents aren't handsome cowboys running Christmas tree farms.

SEE ALSO: 

Kiva website for small capital loans

Produce Iowa web site for small town Iowa film makers

ORIGINAL POST: "What is the Future of Iowa's Small Towns?" 3 July 2018

Prairie Patch Farms Llama Experience: 
If you've read this far, you deserve a picture of a llama

10th Anniversary Post: Can Cities Change Their Luck?

 

The hit 90s TV series Friends was a harbinger of the "back to the city" years:
Where are today's "friends" living?

(6/13/2026) Ten years ago this month, I looked back on what had been the best ten years for American central cities in a long, long time. By 2015, the "back to the city" movement that had been growing for decades had burst into full flower. From 2005-2015, the U.S. population grew by 8.4 percent; the combined population of the central cities of the 51 metropolitan areas with more than one million population grew almost exactly the same (8.2 percent); however, this masks a wide variety of individual experiences. Using the crude measure of central city population to measure progress, I classified these 51 cities into four categories: 

• STARS (at least double the US population growth 2005-15): 14 cities
• ABOVE AVERAGE (exceeding US population growth rate): 12 cities
• BARELY KEEPING UP (increasing but at less than the national rate): 11 cities
• FALLING BACK (losing population over the period 2005-15): 14 cities

The three fastest growing cities over this period were (1) Charlotte, North Carolina 35.4%; (2) Austin, Texas 35.0%; (3) Raleigh, North Carolina 32.1%. The cities at the top mostly reflected the knowledge economy that emerged along with the Internet, so they were the ones who were most successful at attracting the technical professionals that starred in the new economy. Most were found on the coasts or in the Sun Belt of southern states. (See the map at Saunders 2026b.)

Public Square, Cleveland in 2017

The three biggest losers of population between 2005 and 2015 were (1) Detroit, Michigan -23.6%; (2) New Orleans, Louisiana -14.3%; (3) Cleveland, Ohio -14.1%. New Orleans's decade began with the horrors of Hurricane Katrina; the other cities in this category tended to be older industrial cities in the North which had been stars of the midcentury economy but now were known as the Rust Belt.

U.S. Census data for the ensuing ten years show continuation of some cities' previous experiences, whether positive or negative, while other cities saw interesting changes. From 2015-2025, the U.S. population grew somewhat more slowly, adding 6.6 percent. There are now 56 metropolitan areas of more than a million population in the United States: We've added Tucson, Arizona; Fresno, California; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Greenville, South Carolina. At the same time, the New Orleans metropolitan area fell under a million, but I left it in the dataset. 

Significantly (I think), the total population of these 57 central cities increased only 3.0 percent between 2015 and 2025, less than half the growth of the U.S. overall, and a very different experience from the previous ten years. There were fewer "stars" and more in the middle categories. Interestingly, the number of cities losing population was very slightly less, though eight cities gained between 0 and 1 percent, which barely put them in the "barely keeping up" group.

STARS (13+): 8 cities	ABOVE AVG (6.5-13): 15 cities	BARELY KPG UP (0-6.5): 21 cities	FALLING BACK (<0): 13 cities
Orlando FL 23.2 Jacksonville FL 17.2 Charlotte NC 16.6 Greenville SC 16.6 Seattle WA 14.7 Atlanta GA 14.1 Okla. City OK 14.0 Salt Lake City UT 13.4	Raleigh NC 12.2 Tampa FL 12.1 Miami FL 11.1 Columbus OH 10.2 Nashville TN 10.2 Omaha NE 10.1 Kansas City MO 9.6 Sacramento CA 9.3 Las Vegas NV 9.0 Providence RI 9.0 Denver CO 8.5 Richmond VA 7.7 Austin TX 7.6 Fresno CA 6.8 Phoenix AZ 6.6	Buffalo NY 6.4 Indianapolis IN 5.6 Cincinnati OH 5.3 San Antonio TX 5.3 Minneapolis MN 4.7 Houston TX 4.4 Louisville KY 4.3 Washington DC 3.2 Grand Rapids MI 3.1 Tucson AZ 3.1 Tulsa OK 3.1 Dallas TX 2.3 Pittsburgh PA 1.1 Boston MA 0.9 San Diego CA 0.8 Chicago IL 0.4 New York NY 0.4 Philadelphia PA 0.4 Portland OR 0.4 Riverside CA 0.2 Virginia Beach VA 0.2	Hartford CN -1.6 Rochester NY -1.8 Los Angeles CA -2.6 San Jose CA -3.6 Detroit MI -4.1 San Francisco CA -4.5 Cleveland OH -6.3 Milwaukee WI -6.3 Memphis TN -7.0 New Orleans LA -7.0 Birmingham AL -7.8 Baltimore MD -8.3 St. Louis MO -11.9

Some factoids from this pile of data:

• Three cities were in the fastest growing group in both periods: Charlotte (+57.9% from 2005-2025), Seattle (+36.7%), and Oklahoma City (+35.5%).
• Nine cities lost population in both periods: Detroit (-26.8% from 2005-2015), New Orleans (-20.4%), Cleveland (-19.6%), St. Louis (-19.2%), Birmingham (-15.4%), Baltimore (-11.4%), Memphis (-9.3%), Rochester (NY) (-2.4%), and Hartford (-1.9%).
• Atlanta, Georgia dropped 1.4 percent in the first period, then leapt up 14.1 percent in the second. Salt Lake City, Utah moved up two categories, from "barely keeping up" to "stars."
• San Francisco, California increased 17 percent in the first period, but dropped 4.5 percent in the last ten years. Five other cities moved down two categories: Boston, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; San Antonio, Texas; San Jose, California; and Washington, D.C.

Mural, North Beach, San Francisco, 2014

Each one of those cities has a particular story to tell. And the next ten years promise new stories: Some Midwestern states--not Iowa, alas--have experienced increases in people moving in from elsewhere in the United States ("More People Coming" 2026). The Trump administration's success at strangling international migration to the United States will continue to impact cities even after Trump has left the scene.

All of this leads to the question: Is the urbanist moment over? My post ten years ago optimistically pointed to widespread success among central cities, with potential lessons for the less successful ones. Or do the experiences of the last ten years reflect broad adjustments (limits to growth, sectoral changes in the economy, changes in societal preferences in response to the pandemic, new TV series, or something else)? (Another possibility is that all these findings are altered by changing the unit of analysis to parts of cities, cf. Sanders 2026a).

Betting things will turn around soon?
Cleveland, Ohio has a downtown casino, and soon so will Cedar Rapids!

ORIGINAL POST: "Can Cities Change Their Luck?" 20 June 2016

My Grand Day Out: Iowa River Landing and the Peninsula Neighborhood

The Landing: Apartments with first floor retail, Iowa River Landing

Ten years ago, Ben Kaplan criticized Coralville's Iowa River Landing development as having the design of an urban area but without the connection to or from other places that is essential to urbanism: Iowa River Landing is not well connected to anything outside of Iowa River Landing. While, from certain angles, the place looks urban, it's really just a glorified shopping mall with very expensive condos and apartments perched above.

East 2nd Avenue shops and street parking

Today, Iowa River Landing remains easy to send up. It's a faux urbanist shopping mall of a type I've seen in other places as well. The streets are narrow and relatively quiet even amidst crowds of shoppers, but the handsome brick buildings are full of high-end franchises. LuLuLemon is next to Anthropologie is next to J. Jill. (Do I understand what I have just written? Reader, I do not. Maybe you could try Google Translate?)

View from Midnight Coffee: high end East 2nd Avenue shops

Iowa River Landing is drive-to urbanism with a vengeance. Nevertheless, there are two ways of getting to Iowa River Landing, whether for a shopping spree or for a hockey game...

Xtream Arena is home to the Iowa Heartlanders

...besides driving. The Coralville Transit Facility is located on Quarry Road in Iowa River Landing, which means you're connected by bus both locally and, via the 380 Express, to Cedar Rapids. (That's how I got there.)

The 380 Express stopping at Coralville

Another way is by bike trail. The Iowa River Trail runs from the edge of Iowa River Landing, across a former railroad bridge, to the Peninsula Neighborhood. It took me about 20 minutes to walk from the hyper-bougey stores to the quirky and lovable houses.

entrance to Iowa River Landing Wetland Park

trail bridge across Iowa River

Looking back at Iowa River Landing

Thornberry Dog Park at the edge of Peninsula

Peninsula is a new urbanist-inspired development that was built over a decade ago. It is a residential subdivision, missing many checks on the urbanist checklist. There are very, very few commercial destinations, and no schools, offices or houses of worship. 

And yet, I really liked it. And the connection to Iowa River Landing is not just theoretical: a father and daughter I saw at the coffee shop (Midnight Coffee, part of a regional chain) at Iowa River Landing turned up later walking home down McCleary Lane in Peninsula.

The Peninsula features a mix of detached houses,
row houses and multifamily housing

Apartments on McCleary Lane form the southern edge
of the development

garages face alleys not streets

A bus stop on the neighborhood square is served once an hour by Iowa City Transit, which gets you to downtown Iowa City in 10-20 minutes depending on the destination, and as of current date is free to ride. Four people got on with me just afternoon, which is way more than I've ever experienced at the bus stops near my house.

bus stop where the #6 bus comes once an hour

Across the street from the bus stop is the only commercial building, which contains a ramen restaurant open only in the evenings, a fitness studio open by appointment, and an empty place where a coffee cafe used to be.

Behind the bus stop: Emma J. Harvat Square Park

Hayek Park is named for a former mayor,
but if you want to celebrate the Austrian school,
you go right ahead

Both Iowa River Landing and Peninsula contain urbanist elements, although both are not-quite-urbanist. Both were "built all at once to a finished state," in Chuck Marohn's ominous phrase, so they might be quite a sight in about 2040 when things start wearing out. Still, I find Iowa River Landing unappealing and Peninsula very appealing.

Village green, Foster Road

As not-quite-urbanism, Peninsula succeeds admirably. As I wandered around, I saw more people walking--some with dogs on their way to the dog park, but some without--than I typically would on a warm afternoon in my neighborhood. It was pleasant to be there, and I might find reason to return. I probably won't go back to Iowa River Landing, unless I've been poking around the Peninsula and need a cup of coffee.

SEE ALSO:

Ben Kaplan's Peninsula neighborhood video: New Urbanism In Iowa City: The Peninsula Neighborhood

Seg in Iowa City video: The Iowa City Peninsula Neighborhood | Seg in Iowa City | Neighborhood Tour Series

art on the trail