Planning Our Way to a Vibrant Future

The November 11th editorial in the Columbus Dispatch, "Ohio has never shrunk before" and October's Dying Ohio series has forced a conversation that state policymakers need to have. The Columbus Dispatch printed a version of the following letter to the Editor on Sunday November 17, 2024.

For nearly two decades, we at the Greater Ohio Policy Center have worked alongside many of Ohio's legacy cities: those places that have lost population and industry and are reinventing themselves.

Population contraction is not new to most Ohioans. Attention on this phenomenon is.

We calculate that 60% of the state's GDP currently comes from counties that are expected to lose population in the next 25 years. It is in the best interest of the entire state to ensure our low growth areas succeed as much as our high growth regions.

Other states that have multiple population trajectories, like Tennessee and Georgia, require or strongly encourage all communities to comprehensively plan their futures. Thirty-one states statutorily specify the components a local comprehensive plan must have. At least a dozen states provide grants to places that are unable to locally pay for planning services.

In doing regular inventories of a municipality or county's strengths and opportunities-and identifying where additional support is needed-communities have roadmaps for their future. And the state and federal government have assurance that their investments are part of a larger, strategic, plan.

Ohio's recent population forecasts are not set in stone. Assisting local governments to comprehensively plan their futures is one concrete way Ohio's Legislature and state agencies can help buck these projections.