Part IV: White flight continues
Managers in some older cities counter that the battle for residents isn’t a fair fight anymore and scoff at the idea of building new towns from scratch.
“New urbanism is really old urbanism: walkable communities, a sense of space,” said Tom Barwin, city manager of Ferndale, a small community wedged between Detroit to the south and the rest of prosperous Oakland County to the north.
“Cities are beginning to fall like dominoes. We are in a crisis right now up to our knees. All of the older suburbs are going to experience the cycle of decline Detroit went through.”
Ferndale lost $750,000 in state funding this year. The result is four fewer cops, two fewer firefighters, shorter library hours and a shuttered youth center. So, Ferndale has less money to do the things that retain residents.
The triple whammy of shrinking tax base, big infrastructure bills and high employee and retiree benefits will threaten many inner ring suburbs in the next 10 years, economists and planners predict.
Dearborn Heights, Hamtramck, Ecorse, Eastpointe, Oak Park and Highland Park already face serious financial struggles.
Some 30 older suburbs are forming a coalition to lobby the Legislature for help. One concern is the state revenue sharing system, which, Barwin said, “subsidizes sprawl” by doling out money based mostly on community population. Older suburbs are hurt by the system as population continues an outward migration.
Even teens migrate. For 16-year-old Nicole Lyles and her Ferndale High School friends, driver education this summer is a ticket to fun in other towns.
“It’s very boring here,” she said. “We have to go to 14 Mile just to swim in a wave pool.”
First populated by Detroit’s white middle class, older suburbs are becoming increasingly diverse. Minorities — and to some extent, poverty — are moving beyond the central city. Meanwhile, whites drive the far reaches of suburban growth.
The 10 fastest-growing communities in Metro Detroit in the 1990s are all more than 80 percent white. And the 10 communities projected to grow most rapidly in the next quarter-century are today more than 95 percent white.
“Clearly, people are willing to spend to indulge their preferences and fears,” SEMCOG demographer Jim Rogers said.
How costs spiral
Paradoxically, saving the environment sometimes fuels suburbia. In the late 1980s, the owners of hundreds of modest cottages ringing Thompson and Chemung lakes between Brighton and Howell had a big problem.
Outdated septic systems were ruining water quality. People started having trouble selling waterfront homes. They needed sewers, but the costs would have been $15,000 or more per home.
Area officials found a cheaper solution by adding new sewers and spreading the costs all along Grand River Avenue for the five miles between the lakes.
“Boom!” said Michael Craine, managing director of the Livingston County Road Commission. “Three things happened: You clean up the lakes, you do the least harm financially to your voters and you fill up Grand River Avenue with commercial businesses.
“Was it a good decision? You bet. Do the consequences have a long, expensive tail? You bet.”
Today, the intersection of Grand River and Latson Road just west of Lake Chemung resembles any corner in Livonia or Troy. Latson carried 1,000 cars a day in 1990. It carries 18,000 cars a day now and is one of the most congested two-lane roads in the county.
The Michigan Department of Transportation is pondering construction of $54 million ramps connecting Latson and I-96 just south of Grand River. Then the county would need to spend millions more to improve roads north and south of the highway.
The plan would finally create a closer outlet for thousands of central Livingston County residents who clog Brighton daily seeking freeway access.
“Nobody knows how we’d pay for it,” Craine said.
Part V: Builders tout benefits
