Close your eyes and you can almost see the future. It is 2031. You are in downtown South Bend. You walk to Michigan and Colfax and hop on the streetcar. Where do you want to go? Notre Dame for the football game? The Farmers’ Market for breakfast? Mishawaka for a bar where you can smoke cigarettes inside? Pick one. The tram will take you there.
Read MoreLife during a South Bend winter is life under the permacloud. As the city wakes up with signs of spring, we reflect on the tolls and strange blessings of this uniquely cold and lonely season.
Read MoreSouth Bend should control its own narrative. If we don’t tell a story, we are living in someone else’s. In Midwest Futures, author Phil Christman sketches a history of our region, its frontiers and utopias, in the hopes that we can settle the coming decades just a bit better.
Read MoreWelcome to the party Trader Joe’s, but let’s not pretend that you’re bringing the booze.
Read MoreIn a new episode of This Day in South Bend, we read a remarkable article in the April 23, 1927 evening edition of The Tribune in which a local attempts to sell South Bend to the people of America with a simple, yet profound, message: the people make the city.
Read MoreThe coronavirus crisis reveals a key strength of most heartland cities: they are much thicker societies than global cities on the coasts.
Read MoreDuring the Second World War, South Bend was a powerhouse of industrial production in service of the Allied Powers. As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, it’s time for us to imagine a new kind of wartime production that places us in service to each other.
Read MoreEight years ago, South Bend met Pete Buttigieg with the fanfare of a young boy holding a wooden sign on Mishawaka Avenue. Today, he is a candidate for President of the United States. On this final day of his mayoralty, we reflect on the moment.
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