South Bend Precious City

City

People enjoyed living in the Foundry. It was a formidable and amazing place to settle with a family, or start a life. In the Foundry, there were a lot of industries; thus, people were coming over to the other states looking for a job. According to Garreau, “The problem with South Bend Precious city is that it is failing because cities of this area are old and creaking, as is much of its industry. It is still struggling with its historic role as the integrator of wildly different personalities, cultures, and ethnic group and there is no assurance that the sociological battles that it has been assigned will end in victory.”(65). Few of the industries closed down, leaving behind thousands of people that are unemployed. Because of the poor economy, people could not renew their houses, or just support their families. They stopped having kids, because they had nothing to take care of them. According to the Newsweek' main Street article “America's Dying Cities”, people started increasing by the smallest number after the Great Depression, which resulted in declining of the population in some cities. “In several dozen cities nationwide, the population actually declined significantly as residents presumably began to flee the region's toxic financial atmosphere, or perhaps in some cases, even held off having kids due to lack of resources” (Main Street 1). Because of that the News Week called some of “Dying Cities”. On the contrary, Mayor Luecke, mayor of South Bend, which is one of these cities called 'dying', as being an incorrectly used word. To him, the shrinking population of young people is not enough proof of calling the cities dying and said that he does not trust the accuracy of the census Bureau's annual estimate (Parrot A4).

The Thesis

Population decline is not the only cause of the degrading city, it is important to consider the social and economic aspects to determine the city as being lively or declining.

Discussion

South Bend can be named as one of the dying cities; however, the national civic leagues recognized South Bend as an all American city. It was said that the Newsweek ranking system is based on the negative population shift, and it is misleading. According to the university spokesman Denny Brown, people think that South Bend and other cities that are singled out by Newsweek represent a negative sign that expands on a random, flawed, and precise methodology. According to the critics like Deny Brown, the magazine ranking has failed to accommodate the true characteristics of what makes a city great and profitable. The review is judged as being overly flawed and misrepresented. It is important to know what is meant by the life of a city and how it dies (Parrot, 2). The attributes were recognized for South Bend in 2009, when it was selected as a finalist for the national civic leagues as all American cities. According to the mayor of South Bend, Newsweek's recognition of the dying city and selection of South ...