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Over the past year, it has become clear to me that metro Indianapolis’ middle class has developed a negative attitude toward our urban core that is hurting the development of the city and our entire region. We are squandering our hard-earned edge over peer metro areas built through 50 years of urban reinvestment.
There is growing evidence that the brief and small-scale downtown riots of 2020, combined with other pandemic public safety and housing dynamics, significantly damaged local public views of our urban core. We are in danger of becoming a typical Midwestern city with a decaying and dysfunctional urban core surrounded by suburbs filled with refugees from its problems—both real and imagined—protecting their sequestered quality of life.
Decades ago, Mayor Bill Hudnut proclaimed that “you can’t be a suburb of nowhere,” which drove a generational shift to focusing on downtown investment. Big investments such as the convention center, Hoosier Dome, IUPUI athletic facilities and Circle Center Mall were all made to revive a special place where the city came together to celebrate, socialize and do business.
Next, Mayor Steve Goldsmith expanded beyond downtown to invest in nearby urban areas through his Building Better Neighborhoods initiative and the creation of the Monon Trail.
Later came Mayor Bart Peterson’s education reform innovations, Lucas Oil Stadium and partnerships like LISC’s Great Indy Neighborhoods Initiative. Mayor Greg Ballard supported the Cultural Trail, the funding of the IndyGo rapid transit Red Line, and the Super Bowl Legacy Initiative’s $150 million investment in the near-east side.
These decades of urban community progress were set back by one night of disorder in downtown on May 30, 2020, and further undermined by the general rise in violence experienced in every American city during the pandemic. Those were magnified by debates and political posturing around divisive “woke/anti-woke” national politics that have reached every corner of the region through social media and undermined regional solidarity.
Business and community leaders are broadly complaining that the damage to urban Indy’s reputation is discouraging investment. Real estate agents report that young families are choosing lesser houses in the suburbs over great houses in rising urban neighborhoods. Enthusiasm and support for our urban innovation and charter schools has been dampened by divisive political fights. Our community is struggling to reach a consensus on how to address homeless encampments in urban neighborhoods. While we residents of urban Indy continue to enjoy its many benefits, there is a pervading sense of discouragement among my neighbors.
The good news is that community leaders are advancing important efforts we can get behind. Such opportunities include gathering anchor partners to make Riverside Park a truly regional attraction surrounded by vibrant neighborhoods and using the Blue Line construction momentum to transform IndyGo into a transit system that truly serves all the public. Other critical efforts include accelerating housing investment by releasing local builders from overregulation while fixing our failed Indianapolis Housing Agency and concluding the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance process with changes that ensure public education investments are used effectively.
Urban Indy can shake off its recent setbacks if our region regains its sense of shared destiny and confidence in doing big things. Hudnut mobilized our region to “build well and care about people.” We can build on this legacy to advance transformative initiatives that will revive the health of our region’s core communities.•
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Taft is director of Interurban at Indianapolis-based Sagamore Institute. Send comments to [email protected].
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The perceptions of local public views of downtown can be reversed very quickly with patrol and enforcement. The social ills that contribute to the perceptions are not new; they were simply mitigated by prior mayoral administrations. In other words, the current administration has chosen to let the city rot. Please call in the National Guard Governor Braun.
There is already patrol and enforcement. More of the same won’t fix the problem. Hogsett needs to get off his butt, let go of his ego, and actually put forward solutions for meaningful change as it relates to housing, public services, and public space and programming for youth.
The lack of any sensible gun ownership responsibility regulations is clearly part of the deadly disorderly conduct problem unleashed by our Super Stupid Super Majority party’s repeal of gun possession regulations over riding objections from law enforcement officials.