VanHollenForAG.Com
Posted on 10/08/2006 2:34:35 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
It was Nov. 20, 1967. Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, and U.S. troops were in Vietnam. In Madison, 100 anti-war protesters paraded through a selective service office, while in Milwaukee - a brawny, bustling, blue-collar city - 1,500 employees ended an 11-week strike against Kearney & Trecker Corp.
And at 11:03 a.m. in Atlanta's Crawford Long Hospital, a boy was born.
But Robert Ken Woo Jr. wasn't just any baby. He was, according to Life magazine, the baby who pushed America's population to 200 million people.
Woo is now 38, a Gen X-er, a fourth-generation Chinese-American and a Harvard-educated attorney who still lives and works in the Atlanta metro area.
And America now is on the cusp of passing another population marker - 300 million.
The milestone will be reached sometime in mid-October, according to the U.S. Census Bureau population clock, which calculates a net gain of one person every 11 seconds.
Just what a population of 300 million people means to the country, looks like to the populace and even feels like to individuals probably depends a lot on where people live.
Take Woo, for example, who thrives in the Sun Belt, where the combination of air conditioning, service jobs and interstates led to population and housing booms.
From his 36th-floor office in Atlanta's Midtown, Woo said he can see the elegant High Museum of Art, as well as the site for the Santiago Calatrava-designed Atlanta Symphony Center, scheduled to open in 2011.
During Woo's lifetime, Atlanta's metropolitan-area population has more than doubled.
"Atlanta is definitely more crowded now than when I was growing up," Woo said. "When I was in college, it seemed like every time I came home, they were working on the highways, putting up new buildings. Certainly, traffic has gotten worse. It's almost trite to complain about traffic in Atlanta."
Now, take another Gen X-er, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, who is 18 days older than Woo.
Walker already can see a Calatrava-designed work in all its glory, the Milwaukee Art Museum. But the city and county where Walker works are a lot different than the Atlanta metropolitan area.
Milwaukee County's population has shrunk, from 1,036,041 people in 1960 to 940,164 in 2000. During that period, the Milwaukee city population also declined, from 741,324 to 596,974.
"I don't feel like it's overcrowded in the southeastern part of the state," Walker said.
And there's a good reason for that feeling of open space: The nation's population surged in the South and West since the birth of the 200 millionth American, while the old industrial heartland, stretching through the upper Midwest, struggled with slower population growth.
Like a lot of Americans, people in Wisconsin left the old inner cities and headed to newer, far-flung suburbs and exurbs, even as the state's population rose steadily from 3.9 million in 1960 to 5.4 million in 2000.
Waukesha County's population increased from 158,249 in 1960 to 360,767 in 2000. The populations of Ozaukee and Washington counties more than doubled during the period.
And the state is still growing, little by little, but in different areas: St. Croix County near Minneapolis-St. Paul, Kenosha County near the Illinois state line and Dane County, anchored by Madison.
Allan K. Kehl, the Kenosha County executive, can see that growth each day as he trundles through a county that sits at the northern edge of Chicago's exurbs. Chicago is literally spreading north.
"The national population is increasing, and so is ours," he said.
The same thing is happening in Dane County, home to about 450,000 people. Dane County's political, business and environmental leaders have forged new partnerships in a bid to both sustain and control growth, keeping rural roots while also building new subdivisions.
"We're growing by 64,000 people a decade," said Kathleen Falk, the Dane County executive. "It's partly people coming in and partly our young people not leaving. We have a high quality of life."
In some ways, Falk, 55, symbolizes the changes that have swept over Wisconsin.
"I lived in an upper flat on 30th and Greenfield in Milwaukee over a neighborhood grocery that my Irish great-grandfather worked in," she said. "My German grandfather drove a trolley and then a bus. What a healthy, efficient, diverse, wonderful way to see how we can live."
What became of her old Milwaukee neighborhood?
"It's Latino; it's fantastic," she said. "The fact we have a new generation of immigrants is consistent with the past."
Nationally, the country is in the midst of a population boom, adding nearly 20 million people since 2000.
Immigration is a big driver. More important, perhaps, is that immigrants are settling throughout the country, away from the traditional centers such as New York and Los Angeles. Their presence in other parts of the country likely has sparked the political debate that revolves around illegal immigration and sealing the border with Mexico.
But in many ways, the immigration story brings the country full circle.
In 1915, when the nation reached the 100 million mark, America was at the height of its melting pot phase, with the inevitable backlash of quota laws to limit immigration.
"For much of the last half of the 20th century, we were an insular country, inward looking," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution's Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. "We didn't have much immigration. We were a country of white, middle-class suburbanites, mostly homegrown, building on the prosperity after World War II."
Frey said the country is now returning to the immigrant story; a story, he said, that will play out to the benefit of all Americans.
Immigrants, he said, "add to the vitality of the country," especially one in which a huge generation, the baby boomers, is now heading toward retirement.
And even though there are about to be 300 million people living in America, there's still plenty of room, Frey said.
"There are a lot of places to move out into," he said. "Even if we fill all that up, we can fill in a lot more sensibly."
Walker is hopeful that people turn to the Midwest, specifically to the Milwaukee area.
"Our slogan should be 'Exceeds expectations,' " Walker said. "People in other parts of the country don't know what a great place this is."
And Walker is among those local leaders who are looking south to bring growth to southeastern Wisconsin.
"We're really part of a mega-city with Chicago," he said.
Walker said he recently looked at a satellite map of the region at night and noted that a trail of lights went from Chicago to Milwaukee without many breaks.
"There is a connection to Chicago - ethnic makeup, demographics, work force," he said. "In the past, we've shied away from that, talked about Bears fans and Packers fans."
But Walker and others are focused on the future as America is now the world's third most-populous country, behind China and India.
And in the future, even a country filled with suburbs will likely need mega-cities to compete internationally.
Milwaukee's time may come again as the nation reaches 300 million and pushes toward 400 million, a mark that may be hit around 2043, according to Frey. By then, Gen X-ers such as Walker and Woo will be well into retirement.
But Woo remains poised to tell his uniquely American story to a new generation of Americans.
"I'm sort of like the cicada that will emerge every 40 years," he said.
Worthy of a Midwest Ping?
What became of [Kathleen Falk's] old Milwaukee neighborhood?
"It's Latino; it's fantastic," she said. "The fact we have a new generation of immigrants is consistent with the past."
Um, No, Kathleen...it isn't. We have a new generation of ILLEGAL immigrants. Lawbreakers that you embrace, wholeheartedly. Yeesh!
"Vote Early, Vote Often" Ping. Kathleen tells you who she is every d@mn day!
"I wonder what the rest of the state thinks about subsidizing the Dane County growth, attributable essentially to unchecked growth of state gubmint?"
I live IN Dane County, and I'm certainly not happy about it! I can just imagine what other conservatives around the state think. Let's hope they talk with their votes!
Zoning Administrator's Child Misused Camera
Mon 10/02/2006 -
Dane County officials told 27 News the four year old child of Zoning Administrator Peter Conrad took 226 digital photographs with a county-owned camera, including two photographs of a naked Conrad.
County officials announced Conrad's resignation last week from his $63,000 a year job. Conrad had been under investigation for possible work rule violations.
Me neither.
"...including two photographs of a naked Conrad."
Is that some new slang term I've missed? LOL! What a doofus. I read that his tech-savvy four year old took naked photos of "daddy" while "daddy" was asleep.
Yeah. Um. Okkaaayyy...
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