Indianapolis: over 50 years of urban "cheating"?

[jmecklenborg]

^and residential population is basically irrelevant since after WWII many states stopped collecting state property tax, adjusted what states versus counties versus cities versus towns were responsible for, and enabled cities to levy their own municipal earnings taxes. This encouraged cities to replace residential areas with industrial areas and other types of employment. Low and no-income residents are a drain on municipal resources so there was every incentive to use federal funds to bulldoze poor areas with the hope that the residents would move into federally subsidized housing or move out of the city altogether.

For whatever reason, the media and people who ought to know better focus on residential population and not how many people work within municipal boundaries as a marker of success.