Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
Yeah, it's not like these areas are white-hot or anything, but they've clearly fared much better than the rest of inner-suburban Detroit. It's more a case where these suburbs were a bit tired/over the hill 20 years ago; where grandma lived, and now it's younger families lured to the older homes and semi-walkability. And there really is a ton of teardown activity in Birmingham and Royal Oak, which is unusual for Metro Detroit.
I could see Clawson and Northern Royal Oak not faring as well, as they're the least walker friendly of the bunch and mostly just generic postwar bungalows. Also lots of aging 1960's apartment complexes that aren't particularly desirable. Areas like this:
I grouped Clawson in with the rest because its downtown is kinda hot right now, and it seems to be a cheaper fallback to Royal Oak.
Southfield has clearly declined somewhat as it transitioned from Jewish to African American, though remains ostensibly middle class and still a huge office center. Harper Woods also underwent a white-to-black shift, and was always very modest. And Dearborn has definitely declined. West Dearborn was almost like a mini-Grosse Pointe for Ford HQ employees; that area has stagnated and wealth moved west to Plymouth and Northville. Northville/Northville Township, in particular, is an up-and-coming wealth center.
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The decline in West Dearborn hasn't been that severe from 1990 to now though, so maybe the shift of wealth to more outlying suburbs was already underway by 1990?
West Dearborn
1990: 139.1%
2000: 129.9%
2016: 119.8%
Eastpointe
1990: 110.0%
2000: 104.9%
2016: 79.8%
So West Dearborn isn't as wealthy as it used to be but the decline wasn't as intense as in a place like Eastpointe which saw a pretty intense decline since 2000.
As for Plymouth and Northville, the charter townships were already very wealthy in 1990, even moreso than now. Although Northville is building a lot of McMansions, maybe we've just figured out how to make those more affordable to the upper-middle class with modern construction practices and low interest rates? Or maybe it's being offset by multifamily?
The cities of Plymouth and Northville seem to be doing better than the charter townships, they used to be more middle class than the affluent townships but now they're similar to wealthier. Looking at them on google maps, I do see quite a lot of teardown activity near the town centres. Within both cities, the census tracts closest to the town centre fared better.
Plymouth
1990: 124.7%
2000: 116.9%
2016: 143.7%
Plymouth Charter Township
1990: 184.6%
2000: 175.2%
2016: 153.2%
Northville
1990: 162.8%
2000: 174.8%
2016: 179.3%
Northville Charter Township
1990: 180.1%
2000: 188.6%
2016: 159.7%