TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042991/0429102.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.6 KB | 188 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page  30

A Nation on the Move


The 1990 Census shows how Americans chased dreams and ran from
nightmares, trading inland areas for sunny -- and increasingly
crowded -- coastal states

By ALEX PRUD'HOMME -- Reported by Joe Szczesny/Detroit and Richard
Woodbury/Tulsa, with other bureaus


    In America, getting on in the world means getting out of
the world we have known before.

    -- Ellery Sedgwick, The Happy Profession, 1946



    America is a nation of people forever running toward
bright new futures -- or away from bleak presents and past
failures. Every decade since 1790, the U.S. Census has given
demographers and historians a chance to take stock of this
restless population and chronicle its hopes and fears.

    A century ago, Frederick Jackson Turner used the 1890
headcount as a springboard for his provocative "frontier
thesis," which argued that America's distinctive culture was the
result of its pioneering history. The 1980 Census chronicled the
"rural renaissance" of the 1970s, when city dwellers headed for
the countryside by the tens of thousands. During the following
decade, America did exactly the opposite. Preliminary figures
from the 1990 Census -- the final tallies won't be available
until after July 15 -- depict a nation that has been growing
more rapidly and in more complex patterns than ever before. And
with the large majority of congressional and legislative
districts in the country scheduled to be redrawn over the next
18 months, it is proving one of the most controversial counts
in history. Last week a Census Bureau survey indicated that the
overall population figure of 248.7 million -- representing a
jump of about 10% in a decade -- had missed some 4 million to
6 million U.S. residents. The Census shows these unprecedented
population shifts:

    Racing to the Rays. Americans have always liked a good
tan, but during the 1980s they found California, Texas and
Florida -- which accounted for 52% of the nation's population
growth -- irresistible.

    Burgeoning Big Cities. For the first time in history, more
than half the population (50.2%) lives in cities of more than
1 million, up from 45.9% in 1980. Los Angeles-Anaheim-Riverside
increased at an astounding 26.4% rate, finishing the decade with
14.5 million inhabitants.

    Imploding Industrial Centers. Reflecting a national shift
from manufacturing to service-based businesses, many Northern
industrial centers imploded like dying stars. Yet a few
medium-size cities that had been losing people, like Pittsburgh
and Baltimore, are reversing that trend by restructuring. The
reduction of federal subsidies and the agricultural recession
of the 1980s, meanwhile, accelerated America's flight from small
towns and rural areas. While 44% of the population lived on
farms or in small towns in 1950, that segment has dwindled to
23%.

    Hollowing Heartland. As the unemployed trekked to coastal,
service-based cities like San Francisco and Boston, the nation's
midsection began to empty. "There's been a general hollowing out
of the interior of the country all the way from Minnesota to the
Gulf Coast over to Pascagoula, Miss.," says Calvin Beale, a
demographer with the Department of Agriculture.

    Simmering Suburbs. Four out of 5 Americans live in what
the Census Bureau calls metropolitan areas. But this catch-all
term can be misleading because such areas typically include the
outlying sprawl that surrounds urban centers; moreover, many
communities that call themselves cities actually have the
character of suburbs.

    Staying Put. Surprisingly, some of the frostbelt towns
that contributed to the migrant stream of the 1970s, like
Toledo, Ohio, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Elmira, N.Y., stabilized in
the 1980s. Why? The middle- and working-class residents of
these cities aren't moving.

    Booming Minorities. The ethnic makeup of the nation
changed more radically than at any time in the past. The 1980
Census found that 1 of every 5 Americans belonged to a minority
group. By 1990, 1 of every 4 Americans claimed Hispanic, Asian,
African or Native American roots.

    The momentum built by the Southwest and Florida is a
powerful, albeit unpredictable, catalyst for change. California,
which blossomed like a hothouse flower in the 1980s, has passed
numerous slow-growth ballot measures. Many older, wealthier,
more conservative Angelenos have moved away from the city's
problems to the "inland empire" counties of Riverside and San
Bernardino. The wild card in California's deck is its booming
immigrant population -- largely Hispanic and Asian -- which
renders the future of state politics uncertain. While eligible
to be counted for reapportionment, immigrants who do not become
citizens are not eligible to vote; their children will vote, but
no one knows how.

    Demographers expect Texas, Arizona and Florida to continue
their vigorous growth and gain new political clout. The Texas
electorate is already one-third Hispanic and black, and the
proportion might be higher but for a Yankee influx in the 1970s
and '80s. Florida has eight of the nation's 11 fastest-growing
metro areas; as the separate waves of retirees (mostly from the
North) and immigrants (mostly Hispanic) converge on Broward and
Beach counties north of Miami, the collision of cultures is
bound to intensify.

    The decline of rural areas and the evacuation of the
interior do not bode well for the nation's health. "There will
be a continued outmigration from rural areas," predicts William
O'Hare of the University of Louisville's Urban Research
Institute. "The economic base in rural areas just isn't there
to keep young people around."

    Frank and Deborah Popper, who both teach at Rutgers
University, chronicled the decline of portions of the Great
Plains in 1987 in what they described as the Buffalo Commons.
Noting that "all across the Plains there are future ghost
towns," the Poppers said rural counties from the Texas Panhandle
up to the Dakotas and eastern Montana would be better off if
they became a grassy habitat for native animals. "Government
must start planning to keep most of the region from turning into
a wasteland, an American Empty Quarter," they warned.

    Small metropolitan areas wedded to single industries were
hit particularly hard during the 1980s. Anniston, Ala., once a
reasonably prosperous textile town, lost 9.8% of its population,
prompted by the closing of Adelaide Mills. Without a flexible,
educated work force in the area, companies are unlikely to build
factories there anytime soon. Moreover, potential employers can
get the same routine work done far more economically in Mexico.
"If a small and specialized firm came to ((Anniston)) and
needed 500 to 1,000 skilled workers," says attorney A.W. Bolt,
"we would not be in the running."

    "A Grapes of Wrath scenario is being played out across
rural America," says Harold Gross, an economist at the
University of North Texas. "It's natural economic forces at
work." But other experts contend that the cheaper cost of living
and lower crime levels of rural America may lead to its
comeback. Aggressive diversification will be the key to
small-town survival in the future. Tulsa, once dependent on oil
and gas, is trying to emerge from the bruising '80s as a new
city built around the aerospace industry.

    The demise of rural communities has gone in tandem with
the suburbs' explosion. This, in turn, has helped fuel the
growth of "supersuburbs," such as Plano, Texas, on the outskirts
of Dallas. Many cities consider their suburbs a menace: they
siphon commerce and political power away from downtown but don't
pay taxes to help maintain the city's infrastructure. Dallas
traces its racial and political problems largely to its
stagnating interior. The burgeoning populations around Seattle,
San Francisco and Atlanta may have to contend with the same
problem.

    While the Census has always been the best way to track
peripatetic America, some critics consider it inadequate for the
task of anticipating where the country will be a decade down the
road. "In the social sciences, we have not done and never will
do an acceptable job predicting the turning points of human
behavior," says the Department of Agriculture's Beale. With
virtually every frontier already conquered, is it possible that
the next cycle of mass movement might rehabilitate America's
lost cities and gutted interior? That, of course, depends on
what fuels the country's hopes and fears in the 1990s.