Please note that these superb maps are from the 2000 Census. The comments left by most of the visitors to individual metro maps are often illuminating.

CLICK HERE TO SEE! http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624812674967/detail/

Mr. Fischer has updated the maps to take in account 2010 Census data. The work and maps speak for themselves.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157626354149574/detail/

However, the Census Bureau seems to have totally blown its 2010 count of the island. Somehow, the number of housing units on the island dropped from 695 in the ACS 2005-9 to 226 in the 2010 Census (63 permanent/130 vacant/21 for rent). I guess the bad economy has resulted in hundreds of multi-million dollar condos being razed. Of course, I’m being facetious… but I cannot get any answers from the Census Bureau nor the Miami-Dade Planning Commission as to why 2/3 of the housing stock disappeared in one year. The count of housing units in the 2000 Census was 498. Although the ACS is an estimate, theoretically, the housing count for 2000 and 2010 are supposed to be exact. It is clear from a casual perusal of Google Maps (see below) that there has been no mass destruction

In June of 2011, 133 of the almost 700 units are currently on the market. This fact, in itself, is extraordinary. Elite neighborhoods have not suffered the same fate as lower-middle class and working class neighborhoods during the George W. Bush Recession.

Tiny one bedroom/one bath units (465 Square Feet) on the island are currently available for as little as $180,000. The most luxurious units range up to capacious 7 bedroom units with 7,000 square feet of living space. While the pleasantly homogeneous architecture has a modern Mediterranean motif, the buildings that house the units have finely graded price points. It is difficult to generalize on price as the vast majority of the units have custom finishes that result in wildly different asking prices. A review of properties currently for sale on Fisher Island on Zillow.com shows that an “average” island condo (3 bed/3 bath) has an asking price of between $1.5 and $2 million dollars. The most expensive condo that is currently for sale is on the market for $30 million. It may be wishful thinking as it has been on the market for quite some time. According to Zillow, one of the few single family homes is on the market for $16,900,000.

The Census estimates that there are 425 Non-Hispanic Whites and 15 Mexican-Americans in residence. Twenty-nine of the 226 households have incomes between $35,000 and $50,000, these householders are undoubtedly on-island caretakers. My guess is that some of the tiny units are aimed at some of the fortunate(?) service workers. At any rate, an income in the $35-50,000 range would put any of the island’s real estate far beyond the resources of domestic workers.

As you might expect, Fisher Island is a very unique place. The fact that the housing stock is almost all condominiums is very unusual for the communities that have the highest average incomes. The typical community on the list, is overwhelmingly made up of single family homes… in other words, traditional suburbia.

There are also a large number of condos on the other two resort towns on the list (North Key Largo and Kiawah Island). In both of these towns, there are hundreds of single family homes that are valued at more than $1 million dollars.

Fisher Island must not be confused with the very upper class, summer home haven of Fishers Island on Long Island Sound. Fisher Island, Florida is the epitome of the nouveau riche.

Map #1: Fisher Island, Florida

View Larger Map

According to Wikipedia, Fisher Island was created in Biscayne Bay as a result of dredging and land reclamation projects around Miami Beach. It is named for the prominent Miami real estate developer, Carl G. Fisher who became the owner of the island in 1919. Fisher traded the island to William Kissam Vanderbilt II for a yacht and was the location of a single mansion for many decades. After several changes in ownership, Fisher Island began to be seriously developed in the 1980s and has over the years attracted many celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Boris Becker, Julia Roberts, and Mel Brooks. The island attempted to incorporate in 2005 but was denied this status by the Miami-Dade Commission.

Diablo, California: Gated Privilege outside of San Francisco

Diablo, California has the second highest mean household income of all places in the United States Diablo is an unincorporated suburb 35 east of San Francisco in suburban Contra Costa County. It consists of 347 single family homes and 43 townhouses in a gated, planned community built around the Diablo Country Club. Diablo is located in the foothills of Mount Diablo, a 3,864 foot mountain that dominates the eastern vista of the bay area.

Diablo can be considered a poster child for the Census Bureau’s haphazard way of designating unincorporated areas as Census Designated Places (CDPs). Although Diablo was originally built before the area was heavily developed, it is now part of the sprawl that refused to be annexed into the relatively recently incorporated wealthy city of Danville. Danville has an estimated population of 40,950 and with a mean household income of $193,353. It is very affluent by any American standard. Directly west of Diablo is the CDP of Alamo (17,992 population, $218,072 mean household income). Alamo consists of a succession of affluent subdivisions between Walnut Creek and Danville. To the west of Danville and Diablo is the sprawl of “Blackhawk-Camino Tassajara” (10,336 population, $214,832). The Blackhawk-Camino Tassajara area consists of the planned luxury Blackhawk community and numerous upscale tag along subdivisions that make up the Camino Tassajara part of the name. Oh the indignity of having your “community” named for a street! There actually is a country crossroads called Tassajara, but, as of yet, the sprawl has not quite reached that far east. The mainly gated Blackhawk is built around the obligatory golf club and was planned to eventually have 2,400 units. It is a bit different than Diablo in that not all of the houses associated with the development are in the +$1 million range.

In sum, there are any number of luxurious gated subdivisions across the United States that if considered a separate community for statistical purposes, might challenge Diablo’s number two status. Being California, a million dollars for a house doesn’t go a long way. However, it is still the highest category that the Census Bureau recognizes. Danville has 3,710 home in the million plus category. Alamo has 2,217; Blackhawk-Camino Tassajara has 2,328; and Diablo has 331 out of its 400 homes in the million dollar plus range.

Diablo does have its own identity in the area as it has been around for quite some time. The largest number of houses were built in the 1960s and it was only built out in the most recent decade. Diablo is a quiet community and that is the way the owners like it. I’m sure that the Diabloans will be loathe to be named the “suburb” with the second highest mean household income in America! Thank heaven for the gates to keep riff raff like me from gawking!

Map 2: Danville and its Unincorporated Satellites: Alamo, Diablo, and Blackhawk-Camino Tassajara

View Diablo, Danville, Alamo & Blackhawk in a larger map

As mentioned above, 96 out of the 100 places on the list are found in major metro areas. In addition to Fisher Islands unusual provenance there is #74 Kiawah Island, a planned resort community on a barrier island relatively close to Charleston, South Carolina. It is an incorporated community in its own right. Number 31 on the list is North Key Largo, an unincorporated place on the island of Key Largo. It is largely made up of the Ocean Reef Club, a posh second home destination just south of Miami-Dade. North Key Largo is in Monroe County, most noted for the city of Key West. With the exception of some higher priced outliers, the waterfront homes run in the $3-5 million range in both communities.

The third place that does note neatly fit into the suburban definition is Jupiter Island, Florida. Jupiter Island is #3 on the list and it is located in what the Census calls the Micropolitan area of Stuart, Florida. Stuart is the business hub of Martin County. Jupiter Island is also located on a barrier island and is renowned for its large and elegant waterfront estates. In many ways Jupiter Island is the antithesis of Palm Beach, its glitzier neighbor to the south. Life on Jupiter Island centers around the very Social Register Jupiter Island Club and its hallmark is quiet elegance. It is a club that is very difficult to join unless you are from a “proper” family. The ability to maintain the island’s upper class exclusivity is not iron clad. The professional golfer Greg Norman built a 17,800 square foot house, “Tranquility”, that is on the market for $65,000,000. Further ruining Jupiter Island’s reputation, Tiger Woods recently put the finishing touches on his $50 million dollar home in November of 2010.

Table 1: The 100 Places in America with the Highest Mean Household Income
(American Community Survey 2005-9)

There are many considerations when looking at the list of places as an absolute measure of income. First and foremost, the Census only allows a household to claim approximately $2 million dollars as the highest amount of income. There are valid statistical reasons for limiting reported income. After all, Bill Gates would certainly affect the mean income of Medina, Washington (which come in 95th on the list). However, this is still a rather arbitrarily low figure and has not changed from the 2000 Census in spite of 25% inflation and the most massive shift of income to the wealthiest households in the history of the republic.

Munsey Park #11 and Sands Point #28: Problems with the Data

A good example of a couple of communities that make the statistics hard to understand are Sands Point and Munsey Park on Long Island. Munsey Park is ranked as the 11th wealthiest community in America (mean household income $380,882). Although Munsey Park is indeed a lovely place, it is inconceivable that it ends up ranked higher than nearby luxurious Sands Point (#28, mean household income: $337,871). Sands Point fronts much of the coastline of Long Island Sound on Manhasset Neck and is the home to a large number of Gatsbyesque waterfront mansions.

When looking at the list, it must be remembered that in small places there is a large margin of error for the statistics. In the case of Munsey Park it is plus or minus $61,000 for average household income. My estimation is that it is over by that amount. Although Munsey Park lacks the large eye popping waterfront mansions, it does have its own charms. The “alpha” street, Park Avenue is graced with elegant large homes.

The New York City Metro area is heavily over represented on the list as its suburbs, most particularly on Long Island are broken up into endless tiny incorporated suburbs. Because of this fragmentation, 42 of the 100 are from the New York City metro area. Long Island’s north shore has an almost contiguous string of 22 tiny villages from Great Neck to Lloyd Harbor on the list.

Yet another consideration for the reader perusing the list list is that large mansions with live-in staff quarters are counted as separate households and that fact may compromise mean household income. This may partly explain Sands Point’s lower rating than the uniformly upper-middle class Munsey Park (444 out of Munsey Park’s 742 households have incomes over $200,000.) The 10,000-20,000 square foot mansions of Sands Point probably require live-in help and thus bring down the mean household income.

My attitude towards the problems in the data is that it is the best we have and any fair minded person would agree that the 100 places with the highest mean household income are all among the most elite communities that America has to offer.

Map 3 The Higley 1000 Neighborhoods of Manhasset Neck and Great Neck, New York


View Manhasset Neck-Great Neck in a larger map

To make the above list, a place had to have a minimum of 200 households. For all of you that are interested in the most obscure of data… the following is a list of the tiniest places that would have made the list had I included even the smallest of incorporated places. Naturally the margin of error is even more tremendous in the following places.

Table 2: Tiny Places with High Mean Household Income
American Community Survey 2005-2009

* There were 8 single homes on Fisher Island when Google Map’s satellite made its last pass….

Table 1 United States Population Increase 2000 to 2008, by Race

A picture of Asian-American material success begins to emerge when one examines the median household income growth figures (inflation adjusted) and is further illustrated by the number of households that claim an income of over $200,000.

Table 2 clearly shows that Asian-American households used the beginning of the 21st Century to increase their median household income by 33.0% to $69,047, significantly widening their lead over all other racial categories and nearly doubling the median household income of African-Americans ($35,086).

It is important to note that within the broad category of  “Asian-American”, there are significant different rates of median household income. The 2000 Census found that Indian-Americans had the highest median income ($63,669) followed by Filipinos ($60,570). At the bottom end were the Cambodians ($36,155), the Malaysians ($35,767), and the Hmong ($32,076). Each of these low income ethnic groups are relatively small in number compared to the two largest Asian ethnic groups, Chinese and Indians.

As there are no current income statistics by ethnic group in the ACS, it is impossible to know how they have fared over the last 8 years. My guess is that along with the rest of the country, the 2010 Census will show the greatest gains in personal income going to those already at the top of the distribution.

Table 2  Median Household income Increase 2000-2008, by Race

The +$200,000 Club

The story that the rich have gotten a lot richer over the last twenty years is an old story. The physical proof of wealth pooling at the top is easily seen in the vast expanses of  nouveaux riche McMansions on the periphery of almost any self respecting American metro area. The teardown phenomenon in older wealthy neighborhoods is but another symptom of this increase in high-income households.  American material success, following a well worn path in history,  has a strong penchant for displaying  wealth and prosperity through architecture. Americans aren’t what we eat…. we’re what we live in!

The  increase in the number of American households that claimed an income of over $200,000 between 2000 and the ACS of 2006-8 is stunning. Although the total number of households in the United States increased by 8.0%, the number earning over $200,000 skyrocketed by 88.2%. The number of Asian-Americans earning over that amount increased an incredible 181.5%– a growth rate more than twice the national average and more than 3 1/2 times the growth rate in African-American families (a healthy increase of 48.9%, but lagging considerably behind other racial categories).

Table 3: Number of Households Earning Greater than $200,000, by Race

Asian-Americans Flock to America’s Wealthiest Suburbs

As the number of high income Asian households increases dramatically, they have moved easily into America’s most elite suburbs as well as many other places that may not be the richest, but extremely comfortable.

Table Four lists 22 well-to-do American suburbs and illustrates the huge increase in the percentage and number of Asian households. These increases are much larger than the Asian-American population growth in general and corresponds to their growing affluence as a racial group.

The vast majority of the 22 wealthy suburbs listed below have experienced modest population growth. Many are geographically landlocked and their slow but steady growth is usually associated with intensified land-use. However. the growth in the Asian population is overall quite remarkable. As can be seen in the table the only place on the list to see a decrease in the Asian population was found in Potomac, Maryland. Note that the decrease is tiny and well within the statistical variance.

Table 4  High Income Places with Large Asian-American Populations

Cupertino, California: An Asian-American Success Story

Cupertino, California in the heart of Silicon Valley. Apple is headquartered in the city and just a short distance from a major Hewlett-Packard complex.Cupertino has joined Milpitas, California as the second Asian majority affluent suburb in the United States. Cupertino may be an insignificant socio-economic notch below Saratoga to the south or Los Altos Hills to the north, but it is very affluent by any American standard. On Dec 5th, 2009, Zillow.com’s valued the typical Cupertino home at $964,700. The schools are superb and Cupertino has extraordinarily high levels of adult education attainment befitting a high tech mecca.  More adults have graduate or professional degrees (41.0%) than measly Bachelors degrees (34.1%)!

Between 2000 and 2006-8 the percentage of Asian households has increased from 44.4% to 57.1%. Cupertino’s Asian population is dominated by two ethnic groups. Chinese-Americans makeup 47.7% of Cupertino’s Asian population and Indian-Americans makeup an additional 32.2% of the Asian population (2006-8 ACS). With majority status comes political power. I will leave it to the Political Scientists to let us know how local power politics are playing out! Better yet, it would be interesting to hear from some Cupertinos (?) as to racial relations in their fair city. Drop a note on my blog!

Map of Cupertino, California

View Cupertino, California in a larger map

Asian Diversity in the Southeastern Bay

Although not geographically part of Silicon Valley, but close by, are two excellent examples of affluent suburbs with large Asian populations: Milpitas and Fremont

Located to the northeast of San Jose, Milpitas’ population is 60.3% Asian, an increase from 51.8% in the 2000 Census. It is interesting that the population of Milpitas has a very diverse Asian population (Filipinos, 30.6% of all Asians; Chinese, 22.9%; Vietnamese, 20.7%; Indian, 18.4%). Milpitas has one Higley 1000 neighborhood that surrounds the Summitpointe Golf Club on the city’s east side.

Fremont,  just north of Milpitas, is a large city (206,241) that has a high median household income ($94.979, ACS) and a large, diverse Asian population that is dominated by Chinese (36.3% of all Asian groups), and Indians (34.1%)… a close second in population (well within the margin or error). The third largest Asian contingent in Fremont is Filipino. They contribute 12.4% of the Asian-American population.

Fremont has three of the four highest percentage Asian neighborhoods in the entire United States in the  Higley 1000 neighborhoods. They are all found in the Mission San Jose district of the city: Mission Hills-Vineyards North, 74.6 % Asian; Cameron Hills South, 63.9% Asian; and Avalon-Vineyards South, 54.2% Asian. It should be noted that Fremont’s highest income neighborhoods are significantly more Asian than the rest of the city.

In both Fremont and Milpitas, the largest percentage increase among Asian population subcategories was clearly seen in American-Indian households. The population increase was significant at 58.4% in Fremont and 66.9% in Milpitas.

Map of Fremont-Milpitas Higley 1000 Neighborhoods (2000)

View Fremont-Milpitas, California in a larger map

In summary, the 2010 Census will give us more concrete numbers and it is my opinion that we will see the estimates of the American Community Survey confirmed: Asian-Americans are flocking to our wealthiest Suburbs in large numbers driven by high levels of education and income.

Asian-Americans are still over-represented in the Elite 100 with 4.3% of the households versus 2.7% of the total households in the United States. Although African-Americans makeup only 1.0 % of the Higley 1000 households, they contribute significantly fewer households (.7%) to the Elite 100. As I have questioned repeatedly on my site, where are the wealthy Black households? They made up 11.7% of all American households in the 2000 Census and 4.4% of the households making over $200,000, yet there representation in the best neighborhoods is negligible.

The Elite 100 is surprisingly diverse in terms of the number of metro areas represented on the list. No less than 27 Metro areas have their “best” neighborhoods on the list, although many of them (13) only have one place. As in the list of 1000 neighborhoods, the New York City metro area dominates the Elite 100 with 30 neighborhoods or small villages. There are 17 in the state of New York, 7 in Connecticut, and 6 in New Jersey for a total of 30% of the Elite 100. The Los Angeles metro area is a distant second with 11 neighborhoods on the list, followed by Chicago with nine.

When defining the type of neighborhoods that make up the Elite 100, it is best to think of a continuum as some neighborhoods are difficult to assess on a national scale. As an example what is “traditional” or “nouveau riche” in Florida? With some equivocation I have adjudged that 65 of the 100 as “traditional” and 30 as “nouveau riche“. The remaining five are hard to catagorize oceanfront Florida neighborhoods (Jupiter Island, Johns Island, the Everglades Club of Palm Beach, Lost Tree Village-Seminole Landing, and Ponte Vedra Beach).

There are 15 neighborhoods found in the corporate limits of central cities, however, only Midtown Manhattan could truly be considered urban.

The richest neighborhood in the United States is the lush Holmby Hills neighborhood just west of the Los Angeles Country Club in the so-called Platinum Triangle (along with Beverly Hills and Bel Air). This small neighborhoods has some of the most gargantuan houses in the United States including Candy Spelling’s 60,000 square foot mansion.

The second richest neighborhood in the United States is located in Denver’s Cherry Hills Village. I have named this collection of upscale sub-divisions Buell Mansion-Cherry Hills Park after two of this Block Group’s most luxurious developments. Cherry Hills Village is typical of the Western United States in that it is hard to categorize. It is a combination of old wealth and the uber-mansions of the nouveau riche.

The second and third richest neighborhoods in the Higley 1000, North Greenwich-Round Hill, and the St. Louis Country Club area located in Ladue, are older and very traditional. They exhibit the mature landscaping on carefully screened acreage typical of this type of neighborhood. Each of these neighborhoods have exceptionally large new homes that are interspersed among the equally large older homes.

Good examples of nouveaux riche neighborhoods are the Potomac Manor-Potomac Falls Estates outside of DC or the claustrophobic Old Shepard Place in Plano, Texas (possibly the most unpleasant wealthy sub-division in the United States). Twelve of the top 100 are gated communities. Almost all gated communities are by definition nouveaux riche, although there are exceptions such as The Highlands outside of Seattle and, Belle Terre, a waterfront gated traditional neighborhood in Greenwich, Connecticut. An excellent example of a gated nouveaux riche neighborhood is Coco Plum-Gables Estates. The Block Group that makes up this “neighborhood” is actually a series of gated communities along Biscayne Bay that also include Old Cutler Bay, Journey’s End, and Hammock Oaks. I don’t really know if “gated” is the term to use for Fisher Island, but I guess it fits if you consider that the former Vanderbilt estate is private and not open to the public (you need a boat for access).

As I have made clear in my methodology section, mean income as collected by the Census Bureau has many flaws (realistically a household can’t claim more the $2 million in income), however, I doubt that any observer would question the end result of my research as the communities that represent their metro area are widely acclaimed as the pinnacle of residential success. River Oaks in Houston, Hillsborough Heights in San Francisco, and Tuxedo Park (a section of Buckhead in Atlanta) are good examples of the “best” places to live in there respective metro areas.

One more disclaimer to consider is that racial minorities may be over represented in the Elite 100 as servant’s quarters that have household facilites are considered a separate household. The houses in the Elite 100 are the largest in the United States and many have such quarters.

Here’s is the entire Elite 100 list and their racial make-up. If you are interested in a particular Metro area click on “Neighborhood Summary by Metro Area” on the right side of the this page.

Map of West Los Angeles Core Area (West Hollywood Hills to Castellammare)

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in West Los Angeles

Familiar to many Americans entranced by celebrity, West Los Angeles is centered on the so-called “Platinum Triangle” (Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Holmby Hills). The small neighborhood of Holmby Hills was ranked number one in the nation and may have the world’s largest collection of nouveau riche uber-mansions this side of Saudi Arabia. Two of its more infamous monuments to excess are the Playboy mansion and the 60,000 square foot Spelling mansion that reportedly recently sold for $130 million. The West Los Angeles core dominates the metro area’s geography of wealth with 42.1% of all Higley 1000 households in greater Los Angeles and 53.3% of all households if you include the five adjacent neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley.

Orange County accounts for an additional 22.2% of the Higley 1000 neighborhood households found in the metro area. The wealth of Orange County is particularly fragmented although one could say it is centered on Newport Beach as this town has almost 40% of the Higley 1000 households in the county. The larger “satellites” of Newport are Laguna Beach, Coto de Caza, the Tustin Foothills, and Laguna Hills.

There are no Higley 1000 neighborhoods found in the “Inland Empire” counties of Riverside and San Bernardino and only two neighborhoods found in Ventura County (Bell Canyon & North Ranch). One may be surprised that the Palm Springs area has no representation in the Higley 1000, however the statistical answer lies in the large number of retirees and second homes found in the area. This phenomenon is not unusual as the Hamptons are also absent from the Higley 1000.

Racial Patterns in Los Angeles’ Wealthiest Neighborhoods

As is true across the country, the wealthiest neighborhoods of Los Angeles are not representative of the racial make up of the metro area. It is particularly striking that area’s huge Latino population is so poorly represented in the 80 Higley 1000  Los Angeles neighborhoods. In 2000 Latinos made up 28.6% of the households in the metro area, but a mere 2.7% of the households in the Los Angeles Higley 1000 neighborhoods. Once one takes into to account live-in servants that have separately tallied households, this figure is undoubtedly even less than this small percentage.

Summary Table of Los Angeles Racial Statistics: Table 1

Summary Table of Los Angeles Racial Statistics

In 2000, Asian-Americans made up 9.7% of Los Angeles’ households and 6.6% of the households in the Higley 1000 neighborhoods. The distribution of Asians in the Higley 1000 neighborhoods varies immensely: from a high of 17.2% of households in the Pasadena-San Marino area to a mere 0.8 % in Laguna Beach.

Repeating a pattern seen elsewhere in the country, African-Americans are poorly represented in the Higley 1000 neighborhoods of Los Angeles (0.9%). The Los Angeles area has a noticeably smaller number of Black households than found in other large areas. African-Americans made up only 8% of all households found in the metro area in 2000.

Clusters of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods by Race: Table 2

Clusters of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods by Race

Note that the core area of West Los Angeles has a racial distribution that is almost identical to the pattern found in all Higley 1000 neighborhoods. It is quite amazing that in spite of the high concentrations of Asian and Hispanic households in the LA metro area, there are so few households of those minority groups found in the what is the heart of Los Angeles’ geography of wealth.

You can quickly search for your neighborhood within that page by using the Find feature of your web browser, usually by typing <Control>-F. Enter the name of the neighborhood you are seeking, and Find will quickly search the entire list on the web page. If you don’t see your neighborhood, you can look for others in your area by searching for your State or County.

Good luck, and have fun!  Steve Higley

When one looks at the list of the 1,000 wealthiest neighborhoods in the United States, the information is so fine grained, that the larger picture can be lost. In order to give my readers a bit of perspective I have totaled up the the number of Higley 1000 households in each city or town within their corporate limits.  With these totals in mind, one can then get the big picture of where to find the greatest geographical concentrations of wealth in the United States.

Many of the Higley 1000 neighborhoods that are near the top of the list (based on mean household income) tend to be very small homogeneous collections of mansions such as Holmby Hills or the Woodley Road neighborhood of New Trier Township just North of Chicago. If there was someway to statistically isolate the 63 Coops and 5 Condominiums that line Fifth Avenue from 60th to 96th, this would be undoubtedly be the wealthiest “neighborhood” in the United States. Alas, Census Geography includes the west side of Madison Avenue. Consequently, it is impossible to isolate this gilded row of Fifth Avenue using Census data.

It may surprise some that central cities dominate the top of the list for total number of households found in the Higley 1000. Not all central cities have seen their wealthiest citizens flee to the suburbs (e.g. Detroit, Hartford, and Cleveland). In fact, five out of the top six places are central cities. Manhattan easily tops the list with 37,429 Higley 1000 households found in six neighborhoods.

The Upper East Side of Manhattan, with over 23,000 households on the Higley 1000 dwarfs the average neighborhood on the list that has approximately 700 households. Throw in 9,500 households from the Upper West Side and it is easy to see why Manhattan is at the top of the list. The total for Manhattan also includes the much smaller Higley 1000 neighborhoods of Sutton Place, Beekman Place, Tribeca, and Midtown.

Table of the City & Towns with the Largest Number of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods containing the
Greatest Number of Households

Within the city of Los Angeles there is a string of 23 neighborhoods from the West Hollywood Hills to Castellammare. When the neighborhoods along the flanks of the Santa Monica Mountains are combined, Los Angeles is a close second to Manhattan. Beverly Hills would add an additional 3,000 households to Los Angeles’ total, but it is a separately incorporated city. The Los Angeles total also includes the four neighborhoods in the Hancock Park area (Hancock Park, Windsor Square, Fremont Place, and New Windsor Square) as well as Los Feliz.

Surprisingly, Chicago’s Gold Coast does not figure in the Higley 1000. In fact, in the entire city of Chicago, only one stray Block Group in Lincoln Park had a mean household income high enough to make the list.

Dallas is in third place when totaling the Higley 1000 households within city limits. At 385 square miles, Dallas is similar to Los Angeles (469 square miles) in having the foresight to annex large amounts of land in the path of upscale development. Consequently, Dallas has no less 15 Higley 1000 neighborhoods that stretch from the unique mansions of Preston Hollow on the South to the tract McMansions of Bent Tree North in Collin County.

The annexation of large swathes of land in the direction of upscale development eventually would prove to be a master stroke. When a city’s elite flees to the suburbs, high-end retail, as well as institutions (e.g. churches and synagogues), are soon to follow. Central cities are filled with Church’s in the hands of much poorer folk that have inherited the cathedrals of the rich.

The loss of the upper and upper middle class tax dollars and spending is bad enough for central cities, but without elites, you also lose their input and their involvement in civic affairs. They also have the means to contribute to “good government” candidates and hire lawyers if necessary to keep the city officials on their toes.

Comfortably ensconced in Grosse Pointes of this world… why care about the problems of the Detroits of this world?  It is an all too unfortunate reality in the United States that suburbanites don’t care if the central city struggles as they only care about their small hometown. When race enters the equation, problems between city and suburbs can grow exponentially. My current hometown of Birmingham is a classic example of very little meaningful cooperation between the African-American city and the lily White suburbs.

Homer Hoyt was Right

Homer Hoyt was a urban sociologist at the University of Chicago in the 1930s. He observed the sector and wedge geographical development of American cities and noticed a pronounced pattern where the wealthy move outward from the original elite neighborhoods… usually towards the metro area’s most scenic and desirable geography. Dallas is a perfect example of this pattern (although if you’ve ever seen Plano, the “scenic and desirable” may not apply…)

With the sole exception of the Lakewood neighborhood, all of Dallas’ wealthiest neighborhoods are found along the Dallas North Tollway and Preston Road heading due north from the CBD. The wealthiest neighborhoods of Dallas are bracketed on the south by the separately incorporated Park Cities (Highland Park and University Park) and on the north by the four Higley 1000 neighborhoods in Plano. As the map below shows, the Dallas neighborhoods of the Higley 1000 make an almost perfect North/South axis.

Map of the Dallas Metro Areas’ Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in Dallas

It will come as no surprise that Greenwich, Connecticut, the land of Hedge Fund operators as well as Social Register Blue Bloods has the largest number of suburban Higley 1000 households (8,065). This number is just over 1/3 of the total Greenwich households. Not only are there a large number of Higley 1000 households in Greenwich, many of the neighborhoods are also near the top of the list. Five of the 25 richest neighborhoods in the country are found in the sylvan confines of Greenwich: Round Hill-North Greenwich (#3 on the Higley 1000); Burning Tree Country Club (#9); Belle Harbor (#11); Stanwich-Conyers Farm (#14); and the Greenwich Country Club comes in at (#23).

Map of Greenwich, Connecticut and the Surrounding Communities

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in the Greenwich area

The five neighborhoods are relatively large in terms of the number of households (Mean 1,476 households).  This is more than twice the mean number of households in all Higley 1000 neighborhoods (676). Although the number of Higley 1000 households in the San Fernando Valley is a distant second to West Los Angeles (7,381 vs. 28,533), it has the second largest concentration of wealth in the Metro area (CMSA). One can find the number of Higley 1000 households by clusters (e.g. Palos Verdes Peninsula, Newport Beach, Coto de Caza) by reading the article “Los Angeles: Beyond the Platinum Triangle” on the homepage.

Map of the Higley 1000 San Fernando Valley Neighborhoods

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in San Fernando Valley

I have chosen to group Hidden Hills, a gated incorporated suburb, and Mountainview Estates located just west of Hidden Hills with the Malibu neighborhoods although one could make a good geographical argument that they are part of the Valley. Surprisingly, none of the affluent community of Calabassas’ Block Groups had a high enough mean household income to be included in the Higley 1000.

The San Fernando Valley is large as it covers 345 square miles of which 224 are located within the corporate limits of Los Angeles. The remainder of the valley is found in various independent communities such as Burbank, Glendale and the city of San Fernando.  The LA portion of the Valley has approximately 1.3 million people and according to Wikipedia, has a racial make-up that is about 42% Non-Hispanic White, 42% Latino, 11% Asian, and 4% African-American.

In 2002 the San Fernando Valley failed in an attempt to secede from the rest of the city of Los Angeles. Although the referendum passed by a close margin in the Valley, it did not pass in the rest of the city and therefore the San Fernando Valley continues as a vast suburban hinterland to the rest of the city.

Racial Patterns in the San Fernando Valley Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

The San Fernando Valley Higley 1000 neighborhoods share the same racial profile with the much larger West Los Angeles core to the south. It is overwhelmingly Non-Hispanic White. There is no evidence of the large Mexican presence in the rest of the Valley nor the greater metropolitan area. As I previously remarked on in my essay on West Los Angeles,  concentrations of high income Asians are found in other clusters of wealth in Los Angeles, most notably in the Palos Verdes Peninsula and the Pasadena-San Marino area in Los Angeles County. There are also  relatively large concentrations of Asians found in the Orange County communities of Yorba Linda, Laguna Hills, and the Turtle Rock neighborhood of Irvine.

Table of the Racial Makeup of the Five San Fernando Valley Neighborhoods

Racial Makeup of the San Fernando Valley

A good example of an elite urban neighborhood that did not make the Higley 1000 due to less glamorous rentals and condos amidst splendor is the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago. Some streets such as East Lake Shore Drive and Astor Street are uniformly exclusive. However there are high-rise condos along North Lake Shore Drive that have hundreds of units that are not in Chicago’s highest echelon (e.g. 1150,1350, 1360 & 1400) of wealth.

There are 10 Higley 1000 neighborhoods in New York City that are found on the list of the wealthiest places in America. Seven are in Manhattan and one each are found in Brooklyn (Brooklyn Heights), the Bronx (Fieldston), and Neponsit in Queens. The geography I use to identify neighborhoods for Gotham is problematic as I base my boundaries on Census Block Group geography. Undoubtedly, the 63 coops and 5 condominiums that line Fifth Avenue would be the wealthiest neighborhood in America (yes, I’m stretching the definition of neighborhood here!) However, due to Block Group geography, the statistics for these luxurious buildings are compromised by the buildings that are on the other side of the block groups, the west side of Madison Avenue.

There are 38,259 households in the seven Higley 1000 neighborhoods of Manhattan. These golden blocks make up a mere 5.2% of Manhattan’s 738,644 occupied housing units in the 2000 Census. As might be expected, the Upper East Side dominates the Manhattan statistics with 60.2% of all the households. The Upper East Side and it’s two satellites (Sutton Place and Beekman Place) are whiter than white. The households of the Upper East Side are only rivaled in their lack of diversity by the Higley 1000 neighborhoods of Fairfield County, Connecticut.

The second largest concentration of wealth in Manhattan is found on the Upper West Side. The wealthiest Block groups of the Upper West Side are hard to categorize as they consist of no less than five noncontiguous Block Groups stretching from Columbus Circle to 92nd and West End Avenue. (see the map below). These ultra Liberal neighborhoods are only moderately more integrated than the Upper East Side. Asians make up 6.5% of the households on the Higley 1000 Block Groups on the Upper West Side, however there are few Blacks (1.7%).

There are an extremely wealthy collection of Block Groups that I have dubbed Midtown Manhattan made up of a portion of the mainly commercial area south of 59th Street. With a mere 494 households (barely enough for a couple of high-rises), it is none-the-less, extraordinarily wealthy.

The downtown area is represented in the Higley 1000 by most of Tribeca. Tribeca is 7.9% Asian, a number that is significantly higher than any other of the Manhattan neighborhoods in my survey.

Map of Manhattan Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in Manhattan

Racial Patterns in Manhattan

The geographic pattern of wealthy neighborhoods in the New York City metro area does not lend itself to easy geographical generalization. Because of waterways intersecting the core of the metro area, wealthy neighborhoods spread in virtually every direction from the core in Manhattan, skipping over the outer boroughs. Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens each have only one Block Group that made the Higley 1000 (Brooklyn Heights, Fieldston, and Neponsit).

The geographic patterns of wealth are contiguous and fairly compact in Fairfield County, Connecticut and the Gold Coast of Long Island. On the other hand, the geography of the Higley 1000 in New Jersey is completely fragmented. Wealthy neighborhoods stretch from Bergen County in the north to Princeton in the southwest and Rumson in the southeast. There is no real geographic organization that I can discern in New Jersey! Westchester County has a more scattered geographic pattern that falls somewhere between the Gold Coast and New Jersey.

As everyone in New York City knows, the Upper East Side ends abruptly at 96th Street. The definition of the “Upper East Side” includes all of the Census Tracts east to Lexington Avenue with a bump out to Third Avenue between 66th and 79th. The rest of the. The remainder of the Upper East Side is defined as “Yorkville” in the Higley 1000.

The Upper West Side was a much more challenging exercise as the Block Groups that were wealthy enough to qualify for the Higley 1000 are geographically scattered from 59th to 92nd in five noncontiguous groups. As of this writing, a Block Group would need to have an approximate mean household income of $181,000 to be included in the list. There was only one Block Group found in Greenwich Village along the Hudson waterfront of the West Village . On the other hand, most of Tribeca is represented in the Higley 1000.

Ironclad Racial Segregation Predominates All of Metro New York City’s Clusters of Wealth

From the posh coops of Fifth Avenue to the spectacular mansions in North Greenwich; From horse farms of Bedford to the horse farms of Far Hills, New Jersey; racial segregation is surprisingly constant. Although there are concentrations of Asians found in all of the metro areas clusters of wealth (with the exception of Fairfield County), there are few Latino households and even fewer African-American households found in New York City’s Higley 1000 neighborhoods. In this respect, as the table below clearly shows, New York City’s minority representation is statistically the same as the rest of the country.

Higley 1000 Racial Statistics by Region

New York Metro Area Summary

	

	

		
REGION
		
# OF NEIGH
		
HOUSEHOLDS
		
BLACK
		
ASIAN
		
HISP
		
WHITE
	
	
	

		
Manhattan
		
7
		
38,259
		
0.9
		
4.1
		
3.4
		
89.5
	
	

		
Long Island
		
53
		
34,407
		
0.7
		
4.8
		
1.4
		
92.2
	
	

		
Westchester
		
47
		
40,312
		
1.1
		
5.2
		
2.3
		
90.4
	
	

		
Fairfield
		
44
		
36,641
		
0.5
		
2.1
		
1.2
		
95.6
	
	

		
New Jersey
		
68
		
58,791
		
1.5
		
5.7
		
1.8
		
90.3
	
	

		
Higley1000
		
1000
		
739,501
		
1.0
		
4.9
		
2.3
		
90.9
	
	

		
NYC CMSA
		
NA
		
7,735,264
		
15.2
		
5.6
		
14.3
		
62.4