Trying To Return To The Days Of Glory

Sonari Glinton visits South Bend, Indiana and looks at the town's attempt to get over the closing of Studebaker nearly 50 years ago:

South Bend is like so many towns in the Midwest: If you look around you can see traces of their former glory.
Near downtown, there's a Catholic church less than a block from another Catholic church — one for the Irish and another for the Poles. Sturdy, low slung houses line the streets, and there's a tavern on almost every corner.
For many years the leaders of the town had anything but a vision for South Bend's future. The city lost about one-third of its population in the years after Studebaker. Last year, Newsweek put it on its list of America's Dying Cities.
The town spent years trying to figure what to do and how to get another Studebaker-type company to fill the hole. Meanwhile, old factory buildings took up blocks and blocks of real estate as a constant reminder of what the town had lost.

South Bend is an interesting place, and the old factories at Studebaker did make the town seem almost haunted.  I loved the part about the ethnic Catholic churches closer than Subway stores, Dollar Generals or Starbucks today.  But the part about the town losing a third of it's population kind of grates on me.  That doesn't take into account the effects of suburbanization.  Take a look at the data for St. Joseph County, where South Bend is the county seat:

 

1900	58,881		38.7%
1910	84,312		43.2%
1920	103,304		22.5%
1930	160,033		54.9%
1940	161,823		1.1%
1950	205,058		26.7%
1960	238,614		16.4%
1970	245,045		2.7%
1980	241,617		−1.4%
1990	247,052		2.2%
2000	265,559		7.5%
2010	266,931		0.5%

Compare that to South Bend itself (also, look at Granger, whose Census data makes Russia, Ohio look like a bunch of poor folks, I mean $80,000 median household income, seriously?):

1900	35,999		65.0%
1910	53,684		49.1%
1920	70,983		32.2%
1930	104,193		46.8%
1940	101,268		−2.8%
1950	115,911		14.5%
1960	132,445		14.3%
1970	125,850		−5.0%
1980	109,727		−12.8%
1990	105,511		−3.8%
2000	107,789		2.2%
2010	101,168		−6.1%

While single-digit growth for the county doesn't look that impressive, it is still growth.  From 1930 to 2010, the county population increased nearly 67%.  But in 1930, 65% of the county's population resided in South Bend, as compared to 38% in 2010.  South Bend may be struggling, but it won't be disappearing from maps anytime soon.