Muncie, Indiana

Muncie is a city in Indiana in the United States. It is known as "Middletown USA" because many sociological studies were conducted there because it was said to be the typical American city. The population of Muncie in 2011 was 67,430 people.
Muncie is in Delaware County, about northeast of Indianapolis. The county was named after the Delaware Indians, a native American people, who had moved west from Ohio in the 1770's. They settled along the banks of the White River. One of the settlements was named Muncietown. In 1818 the Delaware signed a treaty with the US Government and moved out of the area to go further west.
Middletown.
Sociologists, Robert S. Lynd and his wife, Helen Merrell Lynd, studied Muncie in the 1920s. They wrote two books about life in Muncie called "Middletown: A study in modern American culture", and "Middletown in Transition". They wanted to study the typical small American city, which of course can not exist. They wanted to see how life in a city had changed from 1890 to 1925. They were going to study a city they way an anthropologist would study a primitive tribe. They decided to look at six parts of living in a city:
They chose Muncie because it shared features with many other small cities. The selection was based on the following:
Muncie was chosen from the 143 cities that met the above descriptions. Since then Muncie has been studied by other sociologists looking at life in America. The Ball State University in Muncie runs the Center for Middletown Studies to continue the research.