House, Irwin, OH
Any industry there was in the west side of western Ohio is hard to come by these days. What remains, by and large, is the strange American industry that is large scale agriculture; that is to say, beans and corn, corn and beans. In the spaces between the sprawling acres of these two row crops lie the paper thin husks of small towns that once thrived but now barely exist. As one moves to the east side of western Ohio, ever closer to the metropolitan state capital Columbus, speck-sized farm towns give way to modern suburbia, the inhabitants’ attentions facing east – towards the city and the service based jobs there – their proverbial backs turned to the green fields and gray Main Streets to the west.
The same split plays out in the south end of western Ohio, where Dayton anchors a somewhat smaller but still noticeable suburban belt. The populace there finds its work amongst Dayton’s universities, medical establishments and the military – along with some remaining manufacturing, and the small towns are left decaying out beyond the ring of suburbs.
In some sense, the split between suburbs and urban communities on the one hand and small town rural life on the other prevails throughout the country. It is a split between the world of the rural and industrial, of tangible production as opposed to the incorporeal world of services. Work of the hands versus work of the mind, the country versus the city, the blue collar versus the white. It is also a split of cities and their suburbs versus standing-on-their-own small towns. And if population and employment trends are safe indicators, it is also a story of where, as a country, we have been versus where we are going.
Subdivision Home, Dublin, OH
Today, more than 85% of all Americans live in suburban or urban counties. That leaves a mere 15% living in rural environs. American cities alone contain a hair shy of one third of the entire American population. This imbalance is growing, too. Since 2000, Americans have steadily flowed from rural to non-rural America, with most rural counties losing inhabitants to cities since 2000, particularly in the mid-west. Birth rates have failed to make up for the flight. The majority of rural counties now have fewer American born residents than they did at the turn of the millennium.
Remarkably, these two worlds often live in each other’s backyards, especially in rural counties just east of the Mississippi where the most depleted of small towns sit an automotive stone’s throw from suburban enclaves encircling cities. A prime example is little Hollansburg, OH, less than an hour by car to Dayton; another is speck-on-the-map Irwin, OH, even closer to downtown Columbus than Hollansburg is to Dayton. Both of these fading towns sit less than 50 minutes by car from their nearest cities, yet seemingly 50 years away in time.
House, Hollansburg, OH
Hollansburg struggles with day to day municipal maintenance – its roads, for example, are in need of repaving if not outright replacement – but it has no tax base to fund any. Hollansburg’s mayor – a part time job with full time responsibilities – expresses hope in a strength-in-numbers approach to small town management, quick to share his vision of a collective of western Ohio small town mayors. He has yet to sign-on any others.
As depleted as Hollansburg is, Irwin has even less. It clings to the intersection of Ohio Highways 161 and 4 like a vine wrapped around a dead tree. There is not a single store there, and the largest building is a two story structure, perhaps a former school, overgrown with vines.
Soccer Players and Spectators, Plain City, OH
By contrast, Plain City, OH sits just beyond the suburbs of Columbus. On a recent fall morning, township soccer fields were full of elementary school aged children chasing soccer balls and each other. The sidelines were filled with spectating, conversing parents in an array of folding chairs adorned with OSU and other university imprints. The air was crisp, and it tingled with youthful shrieks and parental encouragements. This single, informal gathering generated more energy, it seemed, than Hollansburg and Irwin could produce, together, in a year.