Tag: Great Lakes

Notes from the factory floor

Does this look like a factory floor to you?

My own name for central Illinois is “the factory floor of U.S. industrial agriculture.” Before moving here in 2018, I’d only ever flown over or driven through this region and never gave much thought to what people had to do to the land before all this food would just spring forth. The story I probably…… Continue reading Notes from the factory floor

We pay too much attention to migration.

Imagine Ohio Stadium filled every 2 months for the next 3 decades with babies and their carers. That's about how many babies will be born in the six Great Lakes states.

In 2016, I was in the middle of a project at the Urban Institute for the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation when the election results came in. The foundation had asked Urban to provide the context for its next strategic plan, charting and projecting the past and possible future trends in the population and economies of the…… Continue reading We pay too much attention to migration.