so, Indy is often lauded as one of the midwest's few urban success stories; a city that beat the odds and didn't fall down into the same old rust belt black hole like so many of its peers did.
and while it's true that metro indy has been one of the better growing major midwest MSAs over ths past 5 decades, how much of that success is built upon the narrative of "success" that uni-gov afforded?
Indy doesn't get bombarded with the same negative messaging that other cities in the region do, thanks in large part to 1970's uni-gov initiative that merged the old city of Indy with most of its surrounding county, ballooning the city's land area from 71 to 362 sq. miles!
BUT when we examine how the 71 sq. miles of the old city of indy have fared, the picture no longer looks all that exceptional.
old city indy 1960 (last census prior to uni-gov): 476,000
old city indy 2020: 319,000
change: -33%
to put that into perspective with the rust belt regulars:
without the magic of uni-gov, indy would've been right there in the middle of that graphic.
now, of course one can argue that indy deserves not to be saddled with the negativity of the "rust belt" because it was smart enough to annex itself out of the story of unrelenting population decline that most other cities in the region experienced, but Indy got to uni-gov itself through a cheat code of sorts.
when uni-gov merged the old city with the county, it merged everything
EXCEPT the school systems. that's right, the suburban areas of marion county that became merged with the city of indianpolis got to keep their old independent school districts, sepearate from that of the big, bad, scary city. without that provision, uni-gov would've been the proverbial snowball in hell.
as we all know, schools are one of the major 3rd rails of local politics everywhere in america, and indy avoided confronting that issue head on, while still finding a way to write itself as a "success story".
it's cetainly a "well-played" kinda moment, but it also still feels a little sussy (to use the parlance of my kids) at the same time.
thoughts?