A Nation on the Move

By ALEX PRUD''HOMME

In America, getting on in the world means getting out of the world we have known before.

-- Ellery Sedgwick, The Happy Profession, 1946

America is a nation of people forever running toward bright new futures -- or away from bleak presents and past failures. Every decade since 1790, the U.S. Census has given demographers and historians a chance to take stock of this restless population and chronicle its hopes and fears.

A century ago, Frederick Jackson Turner used the 1890 headcount as a springboard for his provocative "frontier thesis," which argued that America's distinctive culture was the result of its pioneering history. The 1980 Census chronicled the "rural renaissance" of the 1970s, when city dwellers headed for the countryside by the tens of thousands. During the following decade, America did exactly the opposite. Preliminary figures from the 1990 Census -- the final tallies won't be available until after July 15 -- depict a nation that has been growing more rapidly and in more complex patterns than ever before. And with the large majority of congressional and legislative districts in the country scheduled to be redrawn over the next 18 months, it is proving one of the most controversial counts in history. Last week a Census Bureau survey indicated that the overall population figure of 248.7 million -- representing a jump of about 10% in a decade -- had missed some 4 million to 6 million U.S. residents. The Census shows these unprecedented population shifts:

Racing to the Rays. Americans have always liked a good tan, but during the 1980s they found California, Texas and Florida -- which accounted for 52% of the nation's population growth -- irresistible.

Burgeoning Big Cities. For the first time in history, more than half the population (50.2%) lives in cities of more than 1 million, up from 45.9% in 1980. Los Angeles-Anaheim-Riverside increased at an astounding 26.4% rate, finishing the decade with 14.5 million inhabitants.

Imploding Industrial Centers. Reflecting a national shift from manufacturing to service-based businesses, many Northern industrial centers imploded like dying stars. Yet a few medium-size cities that had been losing people, like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, are reversing that trend by restructuring. The reduction of federal subsidies and the agricultural recession of the 1980s, meanwhile, accelerated America's flight from small towns and rural areas. While 44% of the population lived on farms or in small towns in 1950, that segment has dwindled to 23%.

Hollowing Heartland. As the unemployed trekked to coastal, service-based cities like San Francisco and Boston, the nation's midsection began to empty. "There's been a general hollowing out of the interior of the country all the way from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast over to Pascagoula, Miss.," says Calvin Beale, a demographer with the Department of Agriculture.

Simmering Suburbs. Four out of 5 Americans live in what the Census Bureau calls metropolitan areas. But this catch-all term can be misleading because such areas typically include the outlying sprawl that surrounds urban centers; moreover, many communities that call themselves cities actually have the character of suburbs.

Staying Put. Surprisingly, some of the frostbelt towns that contributed to the migrant stream of the 1970s, like Toledo, Ohio, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Elmira, N.Y., stabilized in the 1980s. Why? The middle- and working-class residents of these cities aren't moving.

Booming Minorities. The ethnic makeup of the nation changed more radically than at any time in the past. The 1980 Census found that 1 of every 5 Americans belonged to a minority group. By 1990, 1 of every 4 Americans claimed Hispanic, Asian, African or Native American roots.

The momentum built by the Southwest and Florida is a powerful, albeit unpredictable, catalyst for change. California, which blossomed like a hothouse flower in the 1980s, has passed numerous slow-growth ballot measures. Many older, wealthier, more conservative Angelenos have moved away from the city's problems to the "inland empire" counties of Riverside and San Bernardino. The wild card in California's deck is its booming immigrant population -- largely Hispanic and Asian -- which renders the future of state politics uncertain. While eligible to be counted for reapportionment, immigrants who do not become citizens are not eligible to vote; their children will vote, but no one knows how.

Demographers expect Texas, Arizona and Florida to continue their vigorous growth and gain new political clout. The Texas electorate is already one-third Hispanic and black, and the proportion might be higher but for a Yankee influx in the 1970s and '80s. Florida has eight of the nation's 11 fastest-growing metro areas; as the separate waves of retirees (mostly from the North) and immigrants (mostly Hispanic) converge on Broward and Beach counties north of Miami, the collision of cultures is bound to intensify.

The decline of rural areas and the evacuation of the interior do not bode well for the nation's health. "There will be a continued outmigration from rural areas," predicts William O'Hare of the University of Louisville's Urban Research Institute. "The economic base in rural areas just isn't there to keep young people around."

Frank and Deborah Popper, who both teach at Rutgers University, chronicled the decline of portions of the Great Plains in 1987 in what they described as the Buffalo Commons. Noting that "all across the Plains there are future ghost towns," the Poppers said rural counties from the Texas Panhandle up to the Dakotas and eastern Montana would be better off if they became a grassy habitat for native animals. "Government must start planning to keep most of the region from turning into a wasteland, an American Empty Quarter," they warned.

Small metropolitan areas wedded to single industries were hit particularly hard during the 1980s. Anniston, Ala., once a reasonably prosperous textile town, lost 9.8% of its population, prompted by the closing of Adelaide Mills. Without a flexible, educated work force in the area, companies are unlikely to build factories there anytime soon. Moreover, potential employers can get the same routine work done far more economically in Mexico. "If a small and specialized firm came to ((Anniston)) and needed 500 to 1,000 skilled workers," says attorney A.W. Bolt, "we would not be in the running."

"A Grapes of Wrath scenario is being played out across rural America," says Harold Gross, an economist at the University of North Texas. "It's natural economic forces at work." But other experts contend that the cheaper cost of living and lower crime levels of rural America may lead to its comeback. Aggressive diversification will be the key to small-town survival in the future. Tulsa, once dependent on oil and gas, is trying to emerge from the bruising '80s as a new city built around the aerospace industry.

The demise of rural communities has gone in tandem with the suburbs' explosion. This, in turn, has helped fuel the growth of "supersuburbs," such as Plano, Texas, on the outskirts of Dallas. Many cities consider their suburbs a menace: they siphon commerce and political power away from downtown but don't pay taxes to help maintain the city's infrastructure. Dallas traces its racial and political problems largely to its stagnating interior. The burgeoning populations around Seattle, San Francisco and Atlanta may have to contend with the same problem.

While the Census has always been the best way to track peripatetic America, some critics consider it inadequate for the task of anticipating where the country will be a decade down the road. "In the social sciences, we have not done and never will do an acceptable job predicting the turning points of human behavior," says the Department of Agriculture's Beale. With virtually / every frontier already conquered, is it possible that the next cycle of mass movement might rehabilitate America's lost cities and gutted interior? That, of course, depends on what fuels the country's hopes and fears in the 1990s.

With reporting by Joe Szczesny/Detroit and Richard Woodbury/Tulsa, with other bureaus