The biggest shift in Arkansas politics is not the relatively sudden lurch from majority Democrat to majority Republican between 2010 and 2014. The bigger, more gradual and ongoing shift is from a largely rural state to a more suburban one.
I have written this next paragraph, with some variations, several times over the years. Picture the most conservative Republican living in a gated community in Rogers. He or she is likely to have more in common with the biggest liberal Democrat in the Heights in Little Rock or an old hippie in Fayetteville on the core issues of state government such as education and roads than with anyone in a small town.
Thriving communities have shared interests, interests they do not share with declining or stagnant ones. For instance, it matters whether highways are viewed as thoroughfares between population centers or avenues to spread the population and growth around or spur economic growth where needed -- and whether spreading population and growth around is even possible, and the spurred economic growth is likely to be permanent or temporary, depending on where the road construction is.
So the article in Friday's newspaper about how most small towns in Arkansas shrank between 2010 and 2017 while the fastest-growing cities are mid-sized and suburban is a matter of profound political importance. The trend is also a matter of profound social and economic consequence, but such wider issues are not my bailiwick.
Roads are just one example. Here is another. Getting a charter school started is a whole lot easier in Rogers or Little Rock than it will ever be in a tiny town where much of the younger generation wanting to start a family moves away to get a job.
Friday's story was based on U.S. Census Bureau figures released Thursday. Arkansas has 501 cities. Of those, 327 shrank from 2010 to 2017. Of that 327, 204 had 5,000 or fewer people to start with. Only 10 of those with fewer people in them now started with more than 10,000 people.
Seven cities in Arkansas have both a population of at least 50,000 and grew by 11 percent or more during those seven years. Of those, four of them are in Northwest Arkansas: Rogers, Fayetteville, Bentonville and Springdale -- all along that corridor formed by old U.S. 71 and Interstate 49.
The desire and the ability to have a home place with some space and maybe some horses appears to be on the wane -- perhaps irreversibly so.
These sorts of trends are not unique to Arkansas, I am sure. What is unique to Arkansas is how long our small-town nature has persisted. We are watching it disappear. We are also unique in having no really big cities. The urban-rural divide is not yet as severe as it probably is between, say, Austin or even Dallas and Houston versus much of the rest of Texas.
If anything, the pattern toward denser populations will accelerate. That is what Mervin Jebaraj, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, has said more than once. He said it again for the article Friday.
I spent a lot of time in rural Arkansas in my younger days. I used to think the digital age might -- might -- help a rural revival. People could live where they wanted and still work high-skilled jobs. I now have to acknowledge the trend toward a more urban lifestyle seems to have only picked up speed thanks to the digital age. Not to oversimplify, but what is the use of having an app that shows the latest, trendiest place to be if it is in another town besides your small hamlet?
Jebaraj advocates mixed-use zoning to allow residential and commercial construction to exist side by side. It is the kind of thing I would rarely hear suggested not so many years ago. Younger residents favor it, Jebaraj say. They want to to live closer to city amenities, such as arts districts and other entertainment.
People would rather sit around a coffee shop than mow the lawn -- much less feed the horses and shovel out the barn. Who would have thought? They would rather walk to work than drive, too.
The more things change, the more they remain the same, as the French say. That is true even of change itself, apparently.
------------v------------
Doug Thompson is a political reporter and columnist for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWADoug.
Commentary on 06/02/2018