This November, voters will decide whether Mars should merge with neighboring Adams Township in 2028. If the proposal passes, Mars would lose its independent governance in exchange for lower taxes and increased public services. The underlying problem Mars is trying to solve is that it has been losing people for decades. Since the last census in 2020 alone, its population has fallen by 12 percent, to 1,285 residents.<\/p>\n
The planet Mars has no residents, but SpaceX\u2019s board has tied<\/a> Mr. Musk\u2019s compensation package to the goal of settling one million people there in the near future. The real question isn\u2019t whether America can settle Mars. It\u2019s whether America can both build a city one million strong on the Red Planet and at the same time sustain American hometowns nationwide.<\/p>\n The question points to a tension at the center of the American character. One enduring American tradition is mobility. If you are the smartest person in the room, people say you are in the wrong room. Move to a bigger city. Find a better job. Leave your hometown for greater opportunities. Go to Mars. This advice is rooted in optimism and the joy of discovery, and it has helped make America dynamic and successful. Ours is a nation that has always expanded outward, and soon perhaps upward. Every frontier has encouraged ambitious people to leave familiar places.<\/p>\n But mobility comes with a cost. As we build outward and relocate, we often make existing places harder to sustain. As families scatter, social ties thin. And as the most capable residents leave struggling places, those communities lose leadership, entrepreneurship, even the tax base that keeps them viable. So, mobility brings real gains but may also create fragility.<\/p>\n America has a second enduring tradition: not leaving for the next frontier but fostering the \u201chabits of the heart<\/a>,\u201d to borrow from Tocqueville, that bind people to the place and communities close at hand. Edmund Burke observed<\/a> that public affections begin with \u201cthe little platoon we belong to in society.\u201d Tocqueville found those platoons across America in churches, schools, voluntary associations, and town governments. About a century later, Jane Jacobs famously refused to leave Greenwich Village while fighting Robert Moses\u2019s highway plans. In this tradition, Americans succeed not by exploring new horizons but making their own place better.<\/p>\n These two American traditions, one of exploration and one of rootedness, need not be enemies. Seth Kaplan, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins and the author of Fragile Neighborhoods, argues that helping people move upward is valuable, but so is strengthening the places they might otherwise leave. Kaplan shifts the focus from individuals to the places that shape them. He describes his approach as addressing problems \u201cnot one by one but place by place.\u201d<\/p>\n A neighborhood is a \u201csocial habitat,\u201d he writes, where families, schools, churches, businesses, associations, relationships, and habits of cooperation reinforce one another. As these become weaker, leaving becomes more attractive. Kaplan\u2019s answer is to strengthen the social habitat so that people have reasons to invest and stay.<\/p>\n Mars, Pennsylvania, already possesses many of the ingredients Kaplan associates with a flourishing community. It has family-run businesses, schools, churches, and festivals. Claire, Shorty, Bill, and Gregg remind us that Mars has people who create and celebrate reasons to stay. The referendum in November is therefore only the most visible choice Mars faces. Its longer future depends on whether those local institutions remain strong enough for families, enterprise, and civic life to grow the deep roots to which young people who leave can imagine coming back.<\/p>\n Mars, Pennsylvania, is hardly alone in facing this challenge. Across America, thousands of communities ask themselves how they can remain places we choose to build up rather than simply leave behind. Their uncertain future raises a larger question about the kind of nation America is becoming. Can America remain a nation of explorers without becoming a civilization of exit?<\/p>\n Someday, I hope, there will be a city of a million people on Mars. But I also hope there will still be a Mars in Pennsylvania. A great civilization should not have to choose between frontiers and hometowns. If America truly honors both of its traditions, exploration and rootedness, perhaps our grandchildren will inherit not one thriving Mars but two.<\/p>\n Keep reading our ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Issue-86-CTA.jpg\")
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Fall 2026<\/a>\u00a0issue<\/p>\n