Rural Flight

Abandoned Grain Elevator, McLean Illinois
 

Introduction

Rural decline is the process of residents living in rural communities emigrating from their rural community to an urban community. Residents decide they have no other choice than to leave their hometown and move somewhere with more opportunities, less inconveniences, more family connections, or even less violence. Over time, this causes businesses to leave as the customer base moves away, and as the businesses move away, more people move away because there is less places to shop or there is no work, which demonstrates how some forces act as a positive feedback loop on each other. In some global communities, violence may cause people to flee from their rural community and choose not to return even after the violence has ended. Usually because amenities, welfare, and opportunities incentivize these people to stay in their new urban environment.

McLean County Census

McLean County census data synthesized by World Population Review.₁
According to census data synthesized by World Population Review, the population of McLean County has declined a total of 2.68% between 2014 and 2025. This means the county as a whole has lost 4,679 people within the span of 11 years, a trend which is observed throughout the state of Illinois.

Bloomington/Normal comprises 77.4% of the McLean county population. The remaining 38,257 residents reside in the many rural farming communities orbiting Bloomington and Normal. The town of Shirley comprises only 135 residents, making it the smallest in the county.

When accounting for the average population growth from the time time span, the average population growth was -0.51%~ between 2020 and 2024. But the decline has been occurring much longer than this.

The average age of an Illinois resident is 38.9 years old, which is roughly the same median age of the United States in 2024. The highest reported is the community of Foosland, a community east of Bloomington with a population of 35, and a median of 53 years of age. Foosland is an outlier in McLean county because of its small population.

Kappa Illinois is a small rural community numbering 211 residents, and has a similarly high 47.6 median age. This means that Kappa Illinois has an unusually high number of older people when weighed against the number of young residents. The median age reported in the above graph is concerning for any community's long term health. Aging populations have less children, require more social services, and may lose businesses as owners age into retirement if the position cannot be filled.

Push and pull forces; Reasons why residents leave rural communities

Coal train going through Thurmond Ohio - Library of Congress
 

The forces which push the resident of a small town out are things that either deny them necessary amenities, make them feel insecure, socially isolated, or make them feel unsafe to live there. These might be for example; grocery stores, medical facilities, primary and secondary schools being too far away. It may also include the local job market shrinking if a town depends on a single industry. Residents may want to move away to live closer to family outside of their local community, and younger people may feel socially isolated if there is nobody in their age range which might relate to them socially (refer to Kappa, Illinois, age demographics above.) These are forces which push people out of a community, but also disincentivize people from moving into the community, or raising families. But this does not include things such as lack of housing, which puts a cap on the number of people able to live in a community

Pull forces are the opposite; existing as things which draw residents into a new community. These are the reasons why residents from a farm town might move to a city and choose to stay there. Cities on average have public transportation such as trains, busses, and metro lines. Cities typically have more job opportunities, and essential services such as hospitals within a short driving, or walking range. The township of Bloomington (which includes both Bloomington and Normal,) has two hospitals, and a number of medical offices, clinics, and specialist offices providing healthcare for residents.

Local push and pull factors

Ben Funk Consolidated School bus.
May 23rd, 1940. McLean County Museum of History
Until 2004, the village of McLean had an elementary school on West street. In its place is now the Mt. Hope Daycare Center, which also serves as the community's poll station. The closure of this elementary school was the removal of an essential service which attracted people to the community. Before the elementary school, there existed the McLean High School, which existed from 1878 (as a two year school,) to 1972 when it was merged with the Olympia school district.

During the same era as the McLean High School, the Ben Funk Consolidated Elementary School served children between McLean and Shirley before it too was closed. In contrast, Bloomington and Normal's 5th and 87th school districts offer many primary, and secondary schools, on top of the dozens of nursery schools, religious schools, and magnet schools in and out of district. Normal also has several higher education options. Such as, Heartland Community College, Illinois State University, and Wesleyan University.

Aside from lack of services, residents also leave their community when their town's primary industry stops bringing in money for local residents. Either because of closure, layoffs, or hiring freezes. A lack of income or a lack of sufficient income forces residents to move somewhere else, even if they wanted to remain in their community.

McLean county is 3% of Illinois agriculture sales according to the USDA's 2017 agriculture census. Also according to the 2017 USDA agriculture census, among McLean County's 1,416 farms that year, over 45% of these had a sales report of over $100,000. However, within the same census, it is reported that between 2017 and 2012, there was a 5% reduction in a number of farms in McLean county. Marking a trend of mechanization which has been happening over the past 50-100 years of American agriculture, causing farms to require less farmhands to make the same amount of produce. Because the price of advanced technology has come down; the GPS, drone, and automated farming equipment have cut into the already shrinking labor force requirements to keep the nation fed. This also cuts into the number of jobs residents of rural communities

Normal Illinois, Mitsubishi Plant 2014
Even city retail and manufacturing jobs have declined over the past 30 years. Bloomington used to have a thriving Eastland Mall, which now serves less customers than it did 10 years ago. The Eastland Mall used to be a major employer of young people in the Bloomington area, including students attending the local schools that also shopped in and around the mall.  In the same area, the Mitsubishi plant (now Rivian) which used to employ several thousand people, was unoccupied and unused from 2015-2020. Many of these workers commuted from their rural communities to work in the Mitsubishi plant before its closure. This course was reversed in 2021 when the Rivian factory opened its doors and began operations officially. Rural workers also may depend on jobs found in urban cities for their livelihood, making these communities dependent on the health of Bloomington and Normal.

Attempts to reverse population decline

December 2013 McLean County meeting to increase sales tax for school facilities. - Pantagraph

Economic Incentives have been used for a long time to bring in new residents, and prevent old ones from leaving. One of the chief complaints is McLean county taxation for many  residents. February 20th of 2025, it was announced there would be a March 4th referendum to make a new 1% sales tax county-wide to help fund District 87 and District 5 schools. One of the promised results was to simultaneously lower the property tax in McLean county. It is expected that this would relieve the financial burden on struggling residents, and provide more of an incentive for new residents to move into not only Bloomington and Normal, but also the rural communities around it. The emphasis was not on rural communities, but the local and state government is keenly aware of the need to make homes easier to afford in the rural communities to relieve pressure on the Bloomington area's housing market.

A January 29th, 2025 article from WGTL covered an important USDA Rural Development Program initiative to offer 'zero down loans' to first time home buyers, and veterans moving into towns with a population less than 20,000 residents. But within the same article, it brought to light plans to tempt development companies into rural towns to build new housing developments, primarily to build single family homes. And the local mayor's association forwarded ideas to bring in development and new residents by building connections to the city sewer line, water infrastructure, and develop a new school district. While another idea was to use money remaining from the Pandemic Relief Fund to give money to 11 rural communities to install some of this infrastructure and lower tax burden on the residents currently living there.

CORE 

Decommissioned McLean village water tower.
Photo taken by WGTL.Monuments serve as community landmarks with a shared history, and sometimes even tourist locations. But the old McLean village water tower situated in the middle of the village was almost destroyed due to the result of a village council vote in November of 2023 which deemed it unfit and a residential hazard despite civil engineer Steve Swift having deemed the water tower structurally sound and to have no risk of falling down onto any of the nearby houses.

Countering the council's decision was the local NGO "CORE of McLean," which offered to purchase the tower and assume all liability and upkeep costs regarding the tower. Although two of the village council's board members were not swayed, the CORE of McLean was eventually permitted to purchase the tower in February of 2024 after a door-to-door campaign was successful in acquiring 127 signatures to save the tower.

Sources

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