The forecast record: what Fort Wayne predicted for itself

1913 — 2021

Fort Wayne has been forecasting its own growth for a century, and the forecasts are now old enough to grade: The first entry is the mildest. The Griswold-Phelps handbook of 1913, printing the census series, estimated the city's 1913 population at 78,000 — a booster-era estimate 22 percent above the census of three years before. The 1920 census counted 86,549, so the estimate reads in hindsight less like exaggeration than like the decade arriving early on paper; the same handbook's estimates for 1825 (200 people) and 1830 (300) are the only population figures that exist for the town before the first census.

The second entry is the great miss, and the most instructive document in this section. In June 1968 the Allen County Plan Commission's transportation study — the professional planning record of its day, built on the cohort-survival method — projected its study area to 352,000 people by 1985 and 390,000 by 1990, and plotted the whole county (its "Fort Wayne Area") higher still, toward 415,000 by 1985. The forecast assumed the postwar curve would continue. Instead the factories began to close: the 1980 census counted the county at 294,335, the 1990 census at 300,836 — the study's 1990 projection had overshot the counted county by about 30 percent, and its 1985 study-area figure exceeded the population the entire county would reach in 1990. No forecaster in 1968 could be expected to have modeled the Harvester shutdown; the entry stands as the record of what the boom made reasonable to believe.

The third entry swung the other way. The Indiana Business Research Center's projections of July 2003, carried in the Citilink transit plan, put Allen County at 346,653 in 2010 and 368,166 in 2020, rising to 391,694 in 2030. The censuses counted 355,329 and 385,410: the forecast undershot both times, by 2.4 and 4.5 percent, as annexation, suburban growth and new immigration outran a projection made in the Rust Belt's long shadow. (The same document projected the six-county metro to 549,915 by 2020 — a forecast the Census Bureau mooted within the year by abolishing that metro's definition altogether, a fate no forecaster controls.) The Center's companion projection for the new three-county metro, growth of 10.4 percent from 2000 to 2020, likewise came in low: the three counties grew 14.9 percent. The live forecasts close the entry, ungraded: the research center's 2030 county figure of 391,694 stands close to the county's 2020 count of 385,410, and Fort Wayne City Utilities' 2021 long-range plan, projecting the city by linear regression, expects 291,192 city residents in 2040 and 299,281 in 2045, and designs for a service population of 300,000.

Sources:

1. Griswold and Phelps, Handbook and Guide to Fort Wayne (1913) — "Ft. Wayne's Population (1825–1913)," estimates of 200 (1825), 300 (1830) and 78,000 (1913) printed as estimates beside the census figures.
2. Allen County Plan Commission, Forecast of Economic Activity (June 1968), Tables 7–8 and the population chart — study-area projections of 352,000 (1985) and 390,000 (1990); the areawide chart toward 415,000 (1985). Purdue Fort Wayne digital collections copy.
3. Indiana Business Research Center, projections of July 2003, in the Citilink Transit Development Plan, chapter 1 — Allen County 346,653 (2010), 368,166 (2020), 391,694 (2030); six-county MSA 521,452 (2010), 549,915 (2020), 580,647 (2030).
4. Kinghorn, "The Fort Wayne Metro Area," In Context (2004) — the three-county metro projected to grow 10.4 percent, 2000–2020; the actual three-county counts are 389,864 (2000) and 447,781 (2020).
5. Fort Wayne City Utilities, long-range plan filing (March 2021), Table 3-1 — city projections of 291,192 (2040) and 299,281 (2045) by linear regression; Allen County projections from STATS Indiana; the 300,000 design population.