Built Historic Retail & Regional Agenda

This upcoming section dives into a better understanding of the context, history, and culture of Muncie, Indiana. Like many Midwestern cities, Muncie, IN, is brimming with leftover spaces that are the by-products of urban infrastructure planned and designed without engaging the surrounding environment. However, cities like Muncie did not appear overnight. Rust-belt cities emerged across the country and became what they are today through industrial shifts (Connolly 27). It’s fundamental to grasp a firm understanding of the community to provide proper guidance through design for the community’s needs are the focal point of landscape architecture. One of the best ways to learn

about a city is to learn from the source. The online sources www.co.delaware.in.us and www. muncieneighborhoods.org share history, knowledge, journal articles, current news, and insight to residence in the Muncie community. Muncie is a city in Delaware County in East central Indiana with a current population of 70,085. This city is most notably known to host both Ball State University, and the famous Ball Corporation back in its day. Muncie has had tremendous times to prosper and, unfortunately, times of economic depression. The local economy began to rise due to the Indiana Gas Boom in the 1880s and through the rapid increase in factories from the 1930s through the late 1900s (History of Delaware). Since then, many manufacturers have left the city leaving it to be one of the many postindustrial cities without its backbone. One of the largest industrial factories is the Ball Corporation when they moved their headquarters from Muncie to Broomfield, Colorado in 1998 (History of Delaware). Much like similar Rust-belt cities, Muncie has increasingly taken steps to improve the community and quality of life for its residence. Since losing mass industrial manufacturing, the city has had plenty of opportunity for redevelopment, but has lacked the financial stability to do so. “The first decade of the 21st century saw a cultural shift toward local businesses and economic empowerment, boosted by the Muncie Downtown Development Partnership and the residents, patrons, and business owners of the downtown community. In 2007, Muncie was rated the most affordable college town in America by real estate company Coldwell Banker.” (History of Delaware)

Needless to say, Muncie has and will be making consistent strides to improve local government, economics, and quality of life. Given these points, the online sources www.co.delaware.in.us and www.muncieneighborhoods.org provide rigidity to my project by giving an in-depth analysis of history, current development, local insight, and background of neighborhoods in the Muncie region. It is no mystery that Muncie is not the only mid-sized post-industrial heartland city looking to reinvent itself. Author James J. Connolly describes cities within Rust-belt region of the Midwest (United States) once thrived in work provided from the now vanished industrial manufacturing industry (2). He goes on to state that these post-industrial towns as: “crumbling city streets, empty factories, abandoned homes, blighted neighborhoods, and desolate downtowns” (Connolly 1). We can see this now in Muncie as young college students and nuclear families are looking to live elsewhere. With many leaving and the obsolete longevity of people staying, Muncie is slowing crumbling with no one looking to save it. Reinventing these cities will need more than just support economically but also in terms of their built environment, cultural character, political economy, and demographic mix (Connolly 5). James J. Connolly’s book After the Factory: reinventing America’s industrial small cities offers

history (2010), offers working strategies towards revival, and angles to push forward small industrial cities into the twenty-first century. To do so, Connolly elaborates further on how Rust-belt cities first emerged across the country and became what they are today. Rust-belt cities began forming sometime as early as the 1950s when manufacturing output began to decline in the United States. When a technological revolution started shifting factories towards more efficient solutions that needed less people to operate, jobs started to deplete. In addition, the United States also started out-sourcing cheaper goods to purchase from other countries than it was to manufacture them. Fast forward up until the early 2000s, the rise of personal vehicles and readily accessible interstates brought easier transportation and longer commutes sparking an urban sprawl. As the purchase of imported goods increased, so did the amount of big box stores and shopping malls. Retail shopping was at its peak while depleting privately owned businesses. With a dramatic increase in emissions, materialism, and carbon footprint,

the urban sprawl quickly took a turn for the worst in being classified as highly unstainable. Moreover, Connolly ties his findings back to Muncie and dives into The Muncie Action Plan proposed by the city itself to revitalize the city. Overall, Connolly’s findings outline the exact dimensions of an urban plan and history brief needed to support the structure of this thesis.

journal article that provides a resume of local government detailed sources related to the economic, political, and residential status of Muncie, IN. Encrypted is a detailed portfolio of Muncie’s economic reflection and projected outcome in years to come. This annual report put out by Indiana Business Review, also known as IBR underlines all things economically related to Muncie such as: housing, business development, governmental relations, and Jobs. IBR provides specific annual numbers and compares them each year using charts and trends in the market. It is through these numbers that we are able to see strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in Muncie at the local level. For example, just this year alone the Muncie Mall closed down ten stores following the closing of its final two anchor stores in 2018 (Faulk and Weiss). In addition to this, entertainment, arts, and recreation industry saw the biggest loss in weekly wages at a total of -13.7 percent (Faulk and Weiss). Including information and statistics such as these provide supportive evidence that there is indeed opportunity or lack of a successful market in these industries.

A community cannot grow if local businesses do not support its growth. As Muncie holds hopeful college students and young nuclear families, it needs room to grow. These young adults and families need local businesses to support this growth and vice versa. Yet this cannot happen if businesses like the Muncie Mall do not keep up with the climate of the community. Malls are created to stimulate the local economy yet as the Muncie Mall continues to diminish, one can see why young adults and families would seek to move out. A community needs longevity and this stems from spaces like the Muncie Mall. The absolute need for this mall and malls like it across the United States is

clearly laid out. It is up to landscape architects to see these changes and adapt.