The Corner Side Yard Looks Ahead To 2025

It's been a fantastic nine months since I launched the Corner Side Yard on Substack. I see great things ahead.

A view of downtown St. Louis, one of the many cities that will be featured more frequently in 2025 and beyond.

Happy Holidays to everyone. As 2024 comes to an end, I’d first like to express my gratitude to all the subscribers and readers who’ve made the Corner Side Yard a part of their lives. Since closing out the old Blogger site I had since 2012, I’ve made a wonderful transition to Substack, and I owe it all to you – the people who want the content I create, and enjoy it.

This iteration of the Corner Side Yard kicked off back in April. In a little less than nine months, I’ve vastly surpassed the number of free subscribers I had at Blogger, already equaled the number of daily pageviews I had there (though there’s always been some doubt in my mind that my old Blogger site was visited more by bots than by real people), and I’ve received more comments and likes in response to my pieces than ever before. I’m much more engaged with the audience here, and that’s fantastic. I’m looking forward to much, much more.

As 2025 approaches, I’m going to introduce some new features and changes that I hope will take the Corner Side Yard to another level. First, I started the Blogger site in 2012 with a focus on Midwestern/Rust Belt cities, a category of American cities that I’ve long believed was neglected on a national scale. Readers here would note that much of my writing has focused on the two cities in that category I know best – Chicago, where I’ve lived for my entire adult life, and Detroit, where I was born and raised. In between those cities I spent seven years in Indiana, and I’ve reflected on life there as well.

However, it’s time for me to consistently cast a wider net. There are great things happening, and real challenges, throughout America’s middle ground. They need to be brought to light. With that in mind, I’m going to seek information and create more content about the happenings in largest combined statistical areas (basically, expanded metro areas) in the nation’s midsection. Here’s are the 17 CSAs with more than one million residents in the broader Midwest region that I intend to focus on moving forward:

· Chicago

· Detroit

· Minneapolis/St. Paul

· Cleveland

· St. Louis

· Pittsburgh

· Indianapolis

· Columbus

· Kansas City

· Cincinnati

· Milwaukee

· Grand Rapids

· Louisville

· Buffalo

· Rochester

· Dayton

· Omaha

At some point I’ve visited all of them, except for Rochester and Omaha. They all represent a facet of the “Five Midwests” framing I’ve used over the years (North Woods, Lower Lakes, Heartland, Midland Valley and the Plains). They’ve all been left behind, at least in a national coverage sense, as cities on the east and west coasts have strengthened their economic grasp of the nation, and southern and interior western cities continue to import millions of domestic migrants seeking affordability and a better quality of life. I’m still trying to bring attention to a region that needs more (I know I’ll get some pushback on the inclusion of some cities. I suspect Pittsburgh and Louisville will be objectionable to many, but I’ll explain when the time comes).

With that in mind, I’m making an ask of the growing number of readers here. I’m extending an invitation to serve as Corner Side Yard “correspondents” – readers who may be able to point me to interesting urbanist happenings in any of the above cities. I’ll also extend that to an invitation to be featured as a writer here as well. If you’re interested, please email or DM me anytime.

Relatedly, I’m going to add content more frequently. My first six months on Substack I was averaging about 1 ½ posts a week. Since October I’ve bumped it up to an even two posts per week. I maintain a full-time job, but my goal is to get up to 4 posts per week. I’m hoping that will be accomplished by writing shorter pieces (right now my target is to get out 1,000+ words per post) that I can turn around more quickly, focus a little more on reactions to current events in urbanism (but trust me, no #hottakes), the introduction of some series formats, as well as the aforementioned featured writing from guest writers.

Why all this? Well, I’m looking to upgrade to include paid subscriptions in 2025. Of course, there will always be free content available, and I will treasure anyone, paid or not, who chooses to read the Corner Side Yard. No details yet; nothing is definite now. However, I’ve seen over the rollout of this newsletter over the last few months that there’s a niche that’s worth exploring. At some point more of my longer-form stuff will be available to paid subscribers.

That’s it for now. This isn’t the final post of 2024; there will be at least one, possibly two more before December 31. In the meantime, thank you so much for your interest, your engagement, your well wishes. You’ve inspired me to go deeper into the Corner Side Yard project, and I hope we can enjoy the ride together.