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Wayne County: Livonia	Oakland County: Lyon Twp.	Macomb County: Ray Twp.
Rich Wiacek works for a print shop in Livonia, a city straining to stay vibrant.	New schools and malls replace horse farms in Lyon Township as a new suburb is born.	Fred Parr, 67, and many other Ray Township farmers want life there to stay quiet.

Growth management challenges 3 suburbs
Both stagnation and boom bring pressures

By John Bebow / The Detroit News

More reports: Wayne County: Aging Livonia competes with newer suburbs Oakland County: Lyon Township barely manages boom Macomb County: Public water ban saves Ray farmland Metro maps Minorities reach the suburbs Poverty migration More move farther out About this series    Throughout the rest of the year, The Detroit News will examine the costs and quandaries of the latest suburban boom that has led Metro Detroiters farther and farther from the central city. Sunday: The costs of growth. Today: Three communities face different growth pressures.     Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

   A half century after freeways and the first shopping malls sparked a suburban explosion, Metro Detroit has more than 150 individual communities -- each with its own, often isolated strategy for handling growth.
   A result is three types of suburbs facing very different but equally intense growth quandaries:
   * Aging inner-ring suburbs with shrinking tax bases, shrinking school populations and intensifying infrastructure problems.
   * Booming rural townships where subdivisions are the new bumper crop.
   * Farm communities just beyond the suburban fringe with a tug-of-war between quiet, agricultural tradition and pressure to accept the building boom of migrating homeowners who want a piece of the country.
   Today, The Detroit News provides an inside look at three of those communities -- Livonia in western Wayne County, Lyon Township in western Oakland County and Ray Township in northern Macomb County.
   Livonia boomed during the wave of suburban migration after World War II. Leaders built the region's largest industrial base and kept taxes low. Now, the school district is shrinking, and voters regularly face new taxes to keep the city in good shape.
   Lyon Township now benefits from the kind of population explosion Livonia saw decades ago. About 40,000 new residents are expected by 2030. Schools, malls and sewers are replacing a rural lifestyle.
   Farmers in Ray Township fight to keep suburbia at bay. Surrounded by fast-growing suburbs, township leaders refuse to add sewer and water lines that would surely end a quiet existence where rush hour means a few cars and tractors taking turns at stop signs.
   How these three community dramas play out could well foretell the next wave of suburban development.