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State Farm Insurance Man Tom Martin, a South Evanstonian, says: "We don't have suburban problems here. We have big-city problems." They do: race, rising crime rates (burglaries up from 594 in 1969 to 842 last year), low-income housing, downtown business stagnation, taxes, traffic, student unrest at Northwestern (which has a 21-year-old black woman as student body president). Evanston's acting city manager, Edward Martin, 27, finds the scene far from dismal. "We have all the problems of a major city," he says, "but on a manageable level. I feel we're a great laboratory in that sense." One thing that helps enormously is the high level of citizen involvement in everything from antiwar rallies through school board meetings to Fourth of July block parties. "I like the fact that the town gets aroused over issues," says James Lytle, vice president of the State National Bank, which is housed in a 21-story building that looms large in Evanston's downtown business district.
There is, clearly, a certain ambivalence in Evanston. Evanstonians consider themselves city dwellers: then again, they feel like suburbanites. Evanston is a city with the virtues of a suburb, or a suburb with the virtues of a city. Either way, it seems to be working.