Birmingham has indeed come a long way in its relatively brief history. Born in the aftermath of the Civil War (1871), the city quickly burgeoned into the iron and steel industry’s “Pittsburgh of the South” by the early 20th Century. The city’s explosive growth in its first forty years earned it the nickname of the “Magic City”. Although it soon became the state’s largest city, Birmingham has always been considered a brash industrial upstart by the more genteel antebellum cities of Mobile and Montgomery.

Birmingham’s reliance on the iron and steel industry would be a curse and a blessing as dependence on one industry would lead to a boom and bust cycle throughout most of the 20th Century. During the last 20 years the steel industry has waned to secondary importance as Birmingham has pegged its future to banking and medicine.

The banking industry of Birmingham has recently succumbed to the on-going national trend in bank consolidation and three of it’s four largest banks have changed form. Southtrust was swallowed by Wachovia which was  in turn forced into Wells Fargo. Regions Bank bought their slightly smaller rival AmSouth. The smallest of the four largest banks, Compass, retains it’s name but is now owned by a Spanish bank. Voila! There is now only one large bank headquartered in Birmingham: Regions Bank. As of June 30, 2009, Regions was the 10th largest bank in the United States with deposits of $93.7 million.

The University of Alabama-Birmingham‘s large medical center is nationally recognized as a leader in many specialties and has been critical to the stabilization of the central city. The university itself was essentially grafted onto the medical center and has blossomed into a respectable urban university in spite of weak state support. The city also has two highly regarded large Baptist hospitals and St. Vincent’s, a very large formerly Catholic hospital.

The city is located in Jones Valley in the foothills of the Appalachians, and the bulk of the city limits lies in the flat lands of the valley. Upscale neighborhoods developed along the flanks of Red Mountain in the early part of the twentieth century as the city’s aristocracy escaped the industrial pollution and captured today’s panoramic views. Don’t bother looking for expensive housing north, east or west of the city; the upscale development of the metro region is found along U.S. Highway 280 to the Southeast of the city. The upscale neighborhoods in this area are very beautiful due to the rugged, heavily wooded topography. Homes are built along the sides, in the valleys and on the crests of Red, Shades, and Oak Mountains. Of course, Birmingham has no real “mountains,” but none-the-less, these three rather steep, heavily wooded Appalachian ridges make for very attractive suburbs and neighborhoods. Suburban sprawl has brought development to the flanks of a fourth Appalachian ridge, Double Oak Mountain.

Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in the Greater Birmingham Metro Area

View Larger Map

Birmingham will forever be tainted by its fierce and violent resistance to racial integration. Although the city’s race relations have progressed along the lines of the rest of the nation, a social and cultural gulf between whites and blacks persists. White flight from the central city (now 73.5% black) continued at a torrid pace during the 1990s with the white population dropping from 91,000 to 58,000. This trend continues into the new Century as the American Community Survey estimates the White population at 48,000 in 2006. The Birmingham city schools are over 99% black, heralding ever more residential segregation. Social and religious life in Birmingham is almost completely segregated. Mountain Brook, easily Birmingham’s most prestigious suburb, is 98.1% Non-Hispanic White. Even Forest Park, a city neighborhood that is much more liberal than the suburbs in outlook and voting, is 96.2% Non-Hispanic white. Unfortunately, there is a latent and sometimes outright hostility between Black Birmingham and the White suburbs.

The Arrival and Demise of Hurricane Larry (Langford)

In November of 2007 Birmingham began a new era with the election of Larry Langford as Mayor. Langford is a controversial character in local politics. Vainglorious and egotistical, he started his political career as the mayor of Fairfield, a struggling, small poor Black suburb adjacent to Birmingham that is famous as the location of the formerly huge US Steel works. Langford spent profusely in Fairfield leaving the small poor city struggling financially to pay off a new city hall and civic center. A man of unbounded ambition, he soon jumped to the Jefferson County Commission where he made waves and headlines by creating what may have been one of the most unusual fiascos in the annals of county governance by railroading through an amusement park with public money. He named his brainstorm Visionland and it was a disaster from the get-go. After $90 million of taxpayers money was poured into this albatross that was in a dreadful location, this money hemorrhaging loser was sold to a private developer for $5 million and rechristened Alabama Adventure. Commissioner Langford also raised the sales tax in Jefferson County to an astronomical 10% to finance a vast rebuilding of the Jefferson County school buildings. As head of the county commission he reigned over the rebuilding of the county’s sewer system that has saddled the county with $3.2 billion dollars in debt after he pursued a policy of debt swaps and was hoodwinked by the city slicker bankers in New York City. Look for the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States when Jefferson County goes under. It is not a matter of whether it will happen…. it is just when. As of June 2011, the Jefferson County Commission has managed to stave off bankruptcy for now, but it is only a matter of time.

Langford was indicted in 2009 for taking $238,000 in bribes for steering the Jefferson County bond business to a brokerage firm run by the highly connected Blount family in Montgomery. The trial, that began on August 31st, 2009 and the jury quickly found Mayor Langford guilty. He has begun serving a 15 year term in a federal penitentiary.

Langford brief tenure was a whirlwind of activity. He immediately raised taxes and “found” money to start an incredible array of initiatives that are too numerous to catalog here.  One bad idea that preceded Langford was the quest for a domed stadium downtown… a sort Visionland Stadium that will push the envelope with a half a billion dollars of additional debt. No professional teams would consider relocating to Birmingham as the market is too small. If the stadium is ever built, Birmingham will have a gold plated stadium that will be used for gun shows and tractor pulls. Considering the impending bankruptcy of the County, the on-going financial problems of Birmingham and the intransigence of the White suburban counties and cities to help the central city, means that it is very unlikely that this boondoggle will ever be built.

Fortunately for Birmingham, Langford has been succeeded by William Bell, an honest career politician who has been tasked with cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor. Mr. Bell is just what Birmingham needs: professional, realistic, and willing to make some tough funding proposals to deal with a difficult economy and the accounting shenanigans of the brief Langford mayoralty. Bell has been forthright in wrestling with a $77 million deficit. He has proposed some tough cutbacks and it will be up to the city council to come up with a better plan for fixing the problem.

One notable and timely Langford intervention has been in the local “mass transit system”. I use quotation marks in that what passes for mass transit in Birmingham is a joke. The local bus system is an embarrassment and Langford proposed non-existent money money for 100 new buses and 8 antique trolley cars that Prague, Czech Republic is trying to unload on the rubes of Alabama. Fortunately, the city council decided the street cars might have to wait and that harebrained scheme seems to have been put to rest. The 100 buses never materialized (surprise) as the money that was given to the mass transit district had to be used to cover a whopping budget deficit and makeup for lost federal transit subsidies.

Whether it is a bus system that actually works, or some other combination mass transit system, a source of dedicated revenue is necessary beyond sales tax increases. Sales taxes, in all of there regressive glory, are the only tax venue open to raising in Alabama without going through the completely corrupted Alabama state legislature. At 10% through much of the metro area, they have been raised to the breaking point.

Taxes: The Third Rail of Alabama Politics

Taxes are the third rail of Alabama politics. The state has the lowest per capita taxes in the United States and yet to hear the politicians talk, you’d think they we’re living in Massachusetts or Minnesota. No matter how horrible the schools are, no matter how inhumane the prisons, no matter how many federal court orders castigate the wretched public services of Alabama, Republicans and “Democrats” will not raise taxes in any meaningful way. One must remember that the difference between Republicans and Democrats in Alabama is negligible and laughable: they are both hard core right-wing conservatives. There is nary a Liberal or Progressive thought to be heard in any meaningful forum from the state legislature in Montgomery to the salons of Mountain Brook…

The voters have made themselves loud and clear on the issue of taxes and any politician that has the courage and audacity to speak the truth on taxes is in peril. Alabama’s current Governor, Bob Riley (R) lived to prove that it is possible to have a political life after proposing a tax increase, but he has a rare amount of courage in my humble estimation.)

Hence, it is difficult to make progress in any meaningful way. Progress on one front means another is neglected. And yet there is progress in an unplanned plodding kind of way.

Whether the domed stadium ever gets built, or the Olympics will choose Birmingham over Chicago,  this is a metro area that can’t even get the lights burning on the freeway system! Mayors have made promises about fixing our darkened byways ever since I have lived here and nothing ever happens. Whole sections of the freeway have no lights as all levels of government show that they are totally incompetent in solving this most complex of urban problems facing the 21st Century American city: changing light bulbs.

The state is mismanaged and under taxed and its antiquated 1910 Constitution gives local authorities little discretion in solving their financial problems. This inability to solve local problems is no more evident than in the U.S. Highway 280 corridor. The highway is the proverbial “golden goose” of Birmingham’s economic development, and it is literally being strangled to death by traffic. The 280 corridor has witnessed a boom in commercial, retail, and residential construction that has overwhelmed the six-lane commercial strip with grinding traffic. This strip of highway has become an unplanned overbuilt jumble and is as ugly as it is dysfunctional…. and still the developers build more…. while the politicians wring their hands and commission another study. Urban planners commit suicide after looking at 280. .

The highway runs through seven competing jurisdictions, and their cutthroat competition for sales tax revenue and unwillingness to control growth have made this an area to avoid for sane motorists. There’s nothing like crawling along behind giant SUVs (drill, baby drill) contemplating the exhilaration and freedom of the open road. The willing residents who live along 280 have no alternative routes to get to the CBD, and if the tolled, double-decked section is ever built, this future “improvement” will promise staggering traffic disruption as it is built. Oh well, as one local Realtor told me in downplaying the dreadful traffic on 280, “It’s no worse than Atlanta”.

I’ll let that speak for itself!

Not that any real improvement for 280 is actually in the planning stage…. The latest proposal is to double deck the highway from the end of the current commercial development to I-459. Opposition from the wealthy suburb of Mountain Brook extending the double decker toll road through their corporate limits would be ugly and especially problematic for 30 or 40 large/mansion homeowners as well as other more modest homeowners who were allowed to build too closely to such a major arterial (see lack of planning).

The city of Birmingham survived the loss of most of its white middle class by the shrewd stewardship and long-running tenure of the city’s first black mayor, Richard Arrington. Arrington made peace with the white business establishment and embarked on an aggressive annexation campaign that long-lassoed some of the most desirable commercial properties along the booming Highway 280 corridor. These include the wildly successful Summit, a lifestyle shopping center (essentially an upscale, heavily landscaped strip mall), a Target SuperCenter, and two struggling yet potentially successful older shopping centers, The recently remodeled Colonnade and Brook Highland, a somewhat forlorn shopping center in a perfect location.

These smart annexations were coupled with an aggressive defense of the central business district. There are currently more than 80,000 people working in the extended downtown… more than ever before in the 130-year history of the city. Unfortunately, this healthy employment base has not translated into a vibrant downtown: there is no significant retailing downtown, the department stores are long gone, and the streetscape is dominated by commercial property. The downtown is devoid of pedestrian traffic after dark.

Operation New Birmingham, a joint local operation has been very successful in rescuing literally hundreds of vacant downtown buildings and finding new uses for them. Birmingham has managed to avoid the curse of Charlotte (whole scale demolition the old CBD). As law firms and architectural design firms have moved into the small and medium sized buildings, work is now in progress on some of the largest abandoned buildings. A wonderful old 1920s skyscraper, the City Federal Savings & Loan is going condo. Similarly, there if hope that the long abandoned Thomas Jefferson Hotel will burst forth in all of its terra cotta beauty reincarnated as the Leer Tower, another condominium development. Leer Tower update: canceled due to recession.

There are few middle class residents in the city center, however, several hundred residential lofts have been constructed in the last few years and city officials are hopeful that these urban pioneers will be the vanguard of revitalization. The recent demolition of the huge, crime-infested Metropolitan Gardens public housing project and its replacement with a mixed-income, federally subsidized Hope VI housing development (Park Place) may augur well for Birmingham’s central business district. Nothing helps a downtown more than removing 900 crime and drug infested public housing units and replacing it with 580 units that are composed of 1/3 carefully vetted poor people and 2/3 market rate (that means lower middle class) apartments!

The Wealthy Neighborhoods of Birmingham in the Higley 1000

There are nine Higley 1000 neighborhoods in Birmingham: Two in the city, three in Birmingham’s premier upscale suburb of Mountain Brook, and four standard issue gated suburban fortresses.

Forest Park and Redmont Park: Birmingham’s Two Elegant City Neighborhoods

View Larger Map of Forest Park
View Larger Map of Redmont Park

Forest Park and Redmont Park are urban neighborhoods on the city’s commonly called the “Southside”. They were both developed in the early 20th Century (1914 and 1925 respectively) and have flourished in the last twenty years. Forest Park suffered through the 1960s and 1970s only to return to its former glory through gentrification in the 1980s and 1990s. Redmont Park has some of Birmingham’s grandest mansions peering down on the city from Red Mountain, a steep 350 foot tall ridge that overlooks the city below. Both Redmont Park and Forest Park are very small with a few hundred homes each. They are also noteworthy in that in spite of the fact that the central city is 75% Black, they are even Whiter than the suburbs! Along with the contiguous gentrified neighborhood of Highland Park, these three neighborhoods are the only upscale places left in the central city.

Mountain Brook: The Tiny Kingdom

Mountain Brook is a large suburb with about 21,000 overwhelmingly Non-Hispanic White residents. Local wags refer to it as “The Tiny Kingdom” due to its insular culture and social dominance.

I have carved out three “neighborhoods” out of the wealthiest sections of the city. Two of these neighborhoods are centered and named after the two towering institutions of social prominence in Birmingham, the Mountain Brook Club and The Country Club of Birmingham. The third neighborhood in Mountain Brook I have dubbed Mountain Brook Estates-Canterbury. Mountain Brook Estates was really the start of this gilded suburb in the in-fortuitous year of 1929. For statistical purposes I have joined it with the adjacent neighborhood of Canterbury.

Mountain Brook’s Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

Mountain Brook Estates-Canterbury

View Larger Map of Mountain Brook Estates - Canterbury

The Country Club of Birmingham

View Larger Map of The Country Club of Birmingham
The Mountain Brook Club-Shook Hill
View Larger Map

Mountain Brook, without question, is the place where Birmingham’s upper class lives along with a good portion of the metro area’s upper-middle class. Few wealthy suburbs in the United States command such a disproportionate majority of a metro areas wealthy and influential families. Mountain Brook has more than 80% of Birmingham’s Social Register families and anyone with a shred of social aspiration must live within its golden boundaries. It is a world apart from the crime infested streets of Birmingham and its genteel forested streets and clubs are truly a kingdom unto themselves.The Mountain Brook public school system is rated the highest in the state, and the suburb unquestionably has the largest number of Birmingham’s movers and shakers. It is home to the aforementioned blue-blooded Mountain Brook Club and the The Country Club of Birmingham as well as the social matrix of clubs and social alliances associated with the wealthy. The social system is difficult to break into in Mountain Brook unless one has a sterling pedigree. If you’re an internet entrepreneur from Boston… forget it… move to Greystone or Liberty Park. Nouveau riche households abound, but don’t hold your breath for an invitation to join the Mountain Brook Club!

As mentioned previously, Mountain Brook is incredibly white. Not one of the 62 African-Americans that lived in Mountain Brook in the 2000 Census was a householder. My guess is that they would mostly be live-in servants. There are plenty of well-to-do African-American families that could afford to live in Mountain Brook, however, they choose not to. This is a mystery I have not been able to figure out at this time. Anyone with some ideas, please leave a note below.

Greystone and Liberty Park

Greystone and Liberty Park are similar in that they are relatively new, gated master-planned communities centered on golf courses. They are both unusually large in scope and have developed neighborhoods with distinctly different price points. Of the two, Greystone has a wider range of single family houses ($200,000 to $3,000,000). Liberty Park is uniformly more expensive although it has a high end rental complex that is carefully segregated from the expensive single family homes. Each of these developments will have close to 3,000 housing units when complete, and a majority of those homes will be worth more than $500,000.

Greystone

View Larger Map of Greystone
Greystone is part of the suburb of Hoover, a large (70,000) and aggressively pro-growth suburb with the state’s third best school system. Located at the southern end of the 280 corridor, Greystone has been extremely successful in spite of worsening transportation problems associated with 280. I drew the boundaries for Greystone to include only the three high income gated sub-neighborhoods for the Higley 1000: two country club themed neighborhoods and a third (Greystone Ridge) with multi-million dollar view estates. There are hundreds of many more downscale houses available in Greystone…. houses as low as $200,000! Would that buy a pool house in Greenwich?

Liberty Park

View Larger Map of Liberty Park

The second gated community in the Higley 1000 is called Liberty Park. If you can get past the hokey replica of the Statue of Liberty, this master planned community is located on a lovely patch of rolling wooded land that is ideal for beautiful homes. Liberty Park is part of Vestavia Hills, Birmingham’s second wealthiest suburb (after Mountain Brook) and its second highest rated school system. Vestavia Hills is a large (30,000) overwhelmingly white upper-middle class suburb with one exception, the recently annexed lower-middle class community of Cahaba Heights. The architecture of Cahaba Heights is unremitting expanses of dreadful post-war ranches. Cahaba Heights has a perfectly central location in the metro area and the physical environment is beautiful…. can you say TEARDOWN!?

The addition of Cahaba Heights to the corporate limits of Vestavia gave the city a geographic link to Liberty Park formerly a non-contiguous isolated piece of development. But that’s another story…..

Highland Lakes

View Larger Map of Highland Lakes

Highland Lakes, is a very large gated community located out the 280 corridor in the rolling Appalachian foothills south of the city. Highland Lakes is a planned development where every house essentially looks the same. The “lakes” are dammed (damned?)narrow valleys in the Appalachian foothills. As a native of Wisconsin, I can say with full-throated condescension, these puddles are only “lakes” in a developer’s dream! Highland Lakes is solely residential and will ultimately be home to thousands of people that live in a monument to Stepfordian socio-economic and Republican homogeneity.

Shoal Creek-Stonegate Farms

View Larger Map of Shoal Creek and Stonegate

The final Higley 1000 neighborhood is Shoal Creek, another gated golf community and the adjacent newly constructed gated community of Stonegate Farms. After more than twenty years of development, only about 90 of the 230 large wooded lots in Shoal Creek have had houses constructed on them. The development includes suburban Shelby County’s answer to Versailles, an over-the-top 45,000 square foot (empty) chateau built by a local entrepreneur. I think it’s visible from space. Years ago, Shoal Creek’s golf course gained some unwanted national attention when the PGA threatened to cancel a golf tournament at the club unless it was integrated. A token Black guy was recruited, given a membership, and the PGA was happy. The Club was technically integrated and the tournament proceeded. The token Black guy reported in a recent newspaper article that he was treated well at the club, but, unfortunately he died recently. Never fear though for Shoal Creek’s integration as they have found another Black guy to replace him that doesn’t caddy or mow the fairways.

The Village of Mount Laurel

Although not a Higley 1000 neighborhood, there is one newly developing community that merits mentioning. If you’re a fan of New Urbanist design principles, Mt. Laurel is a planned community in the middle stages of development on the far urban fringe of the metro area. Yes, suburban fringe, auto dependent New Urbanist design is a oxymoron, but it’s pretty. The question I would havd for the developers of Mt. Laurel is: when you jettison any pretension at having a mixed income community and build on the auto dependent fringe, can you still call yourself “New Urbanist”? Sales have been slow in spite of a charming and unusual design aesthetic. The general consensus is that it’s a bit pricey.. and no more than a cute architectural conceit for the upper-middle class.

Homewood: Birmingham’s Coolest Suburb

And finally, a word about one of my favorite of Birmingham’s suburbs, Homewood. Ideally located in the metro area, Homewood is a predominately lower-middle class suburb adjacent to Mountain Brook and Vestavia Hills. Most of Homewood is made up of well-maintained bungalows and small homes and it has a significant number of rental apartments. Thanks to a strong sales tax base, Homewood has managed to maintain a good school system and has continued to attract young families that have turned vast tracts of forgettable bungalows into beautifully remodeled houses in tidy wooded neighborhoods.

Homewood has two very interesting upscale neighborhoods: Mayfair & Hollywood. Hollywood has a wonderful collection of stuccoed, flat roofed houses built in the 1920s that have been remodeled for the the 21st Century. I love Hollywood: great architecture and a great location. Mayfair is more traditional, with its rolling, heavily wooded landscape, it share’s Hollywood’s ideal location for getting anywhere in Birmingham.

In Summary….

Birmingham is a very interesting town with a wide array of housing choices. This is but the first of my essays on Birmingham. After all, it has been my home town for 15 years and as an Urban Geographer, I have much to say about my adopted home. It is my fervent hope that I will be able to use my web site to express my critical thinking about the metro area.. something that is woefully absent from the boosterism so characteristic of what one finds published locally. The Birmingham News, an achingly Conservative newspaper does a fairly good job of covering the city and bankrupt county, but sounds like a the local arm of the Chamber of Commerce when covering the suburbs. I hope that my website counters the flackery and drivel that passes for journalism about the suburbs of our fair metro area.

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/

New Census Figures (American Community Survey 2005-9) on Where the Well-to-do Live

The figures show that the Catalina Foothills has the largest number of the affluent (+$200,000 household incomes). Pima County has 10,458 households in that category.

1. Catalina Foothills 3,683
2. Tucson 2,143
3. Oro Valley 1,184
4. Casas Adobes 832
5. Tanque Verde 568
6. Marana 337
7. Green Valley 178
8. Sahuarita 117

The Catalina Foothills Landscape

Modernist Architecture in the Catalina Foothills:

The ten Higley 1000 neighborhoods found in Tucson are quite small as they represent sub-divisions built by individual developers. There are only 2,484 households in the ten neighborhoods, each one approximately 1/3 as large as the typical Higley 1000 neighborhood found in the rest of the country. Eight of the ten neighborhoods and almost 90% of the households are found in the Catalina Foothills.

There are two historic neighborhoods found in the geographic heart of the central city. This pair of adjacent subdivisions were platted in 1928 when the city was a small Western city of 32,506 residents (1930 Census). The much larger and newer grouping of eight Catalina Foothill neighborhoods are found in a series of mostly gated communities along the highest elevations of the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains to the north of the city, often shortened to “The Foothills” in local parlance.

The foothills north of the Tucson city limits encompass 100.1 square miles of unincorporated suburban sprawl that is differentiated solely by socio-economic status. The Census Bureau has divided this suburban area into three distinct unincorporated suburban entities that are called Census Designated Places (or CDPs): Casas Adobes, Catalina Foothills, and Tanque Verde. Together, the three CDPs have 135,900 people according to the 2005-9 American Community Survey. This large concentration of upper-middle and lower-middle class households is vociferously against annexation by the City of Tucson and equally resistant to incorporation. All services are provided by Pima County.

The Racial Makeup of Tucson and the Ten Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

The metro area has two dominant racial groups: Latino (32.5% of households, 2000 Census) and Non-Hispanic Whites (58.1%) plus small but notable populations of Native Americans (3.4%), African-Americans (3.1%) and Asians (2.4%). The racial makeup of the “best” neighborhoods have little minority representation. 90.3% of the households in the ten Tucson Higley 1000 neighborhoods are non-Hispanic White, which is similar to all Higley 1000 neighborhoods (91.0%).

Latinos represent a mere 5.4% of the households in these wealthiest of Tucson neighborhoods. Although this is significantly higher percentage than Latino representation in the entire Higley 1000 (2.2%), it seems relatively small considering the significant Latino population that is found in the metro area and City of Tucson (36.5% Latino).

As is typical of the pattern found throughout the United States, Asians are represented in Tucson’s wealthiest neighborhoods at above average numbers than the United States as a whole (3.3% vs 2.7%). However, this is significantly less than the percentage of Asian households in all Higley 1000 neighborhoods (4.8%).

There are virtually no Blacks (.5% of all households) or Native-Americans (.4%) in Tucson’s elite neighborhoods.

The Census Bureau’s geographic division of the metro area has made an accurate accounting of Tucson’s wealthy neighborhoods very difficult. The Block Groups are clumsily mapped and do not follow the mandate of the Census Bureau to isolate neighborhoods of similar socio-economic makeup. The end result is that I have had to estimate the mean household income for each of the ten Higley 1000 neighborhoods found in the greater Tucson area. I estimate mean household income by comparing statistics such as real estate prices and median age as well as speaking to local realtors (always an invaluable resource!).

In the case of Tucson I drove by or through all ten neighborhoods on my last two visits to the metro area to give each neighborhood a “windshield survey”. I was able to tabulate accurate racial statistics by adding up the totals for each race and each neighborhood on a block by block basis using 2000 Census Block data. The bottom line is that the mean household income statistics are estimates, the racial statistics are exact.

Map of Colonia Solana and El Encanto Estates: Two Historical Neighborhoods “on the Flats”
View Larger Map of El Encanto Estates and Colonia Solana

Colonia Solana and El Encanto Estates were developed east of the city’s boundaries in 1928 next to the El Conquistador Hotel, a posh tourist destination during the first half of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, the hotel was torn down in 1969 to make way for the El Con Mall. The El Con Mall’s day in the sun was short and today it is mostly abandoned, losing it’s last anchor (Macy’s) in 2007. The best description of these two neighborhoods is found in Virginia and Lee McAlester’s wonderful Book, “A Field Guide to America’s Historic Neighborhoods and Museum Houses: The Western States”, (Knopf 1998). “This contrasting pair of Eclectic-era subdivisions, both opened in 1928, provide a fascinating lesson in the crucial role that landscape and streetscape play in neighborhood ambiance. Both subdivisions offered irregular lots, curvilinear streets, and dense vegetation, and both suffered the slowdown in development that came with the 1930′s depression and Second World War. Individual houses in both run the stylistic gamut from late 1920s period houses to 1950s Ranch-style houses to a scattering of new construction. Most of these, including the Ranch houses, display some Neo-Hispanic detailing. The two developments thus share similar house designs and street layouts, yet are startlingly different because of their landscaping.

Colonia Solana is an exquisite, and perhaps unique neighborhoods in which you feel as if you have driven directly into the surrounding desert and stumbled upon a few scattered houses. There is no street paving, no curbs, and no gutters. A line of rocks is used to delineate the boundary between road and yard. A natural arroyo running through the neighbhorhood has been left undisturbed. There are no “lawns” in the conventional sense. Instead, the neighborhood contains the fascinating native plants of the surrounding Sonoran Desert”.

“Adjacent to the north is El Encanto Estates, less unusual but also charming. Here the curved streets and irregular lots are arranged in a symmetrical bull’s-eye pattern, a type favored by those designing early -Twentieth Century geometric neighborhoods. Although much native vegetation is used, the neighborhood is dominated by majestic imported palm trees, which accent the formal curve of the streets.”

Both of these ungated neighborhoods are small. I counted 144 houses in El Encanto Estates and 121 in Colonia Solana. Located in the middle of the city, neither has the spectacular views that are available in the foothills to the north. In spite of being located next to a dead mall and some dicey neighborhoods, it appears as if these two islands of wealth have managed to maintain their unique desirability. The houses for sale in both neighborhooods as of June 2008 were generally in the $700,000 to $1,500,000 range.

The Catalina Foothills: Gated Wealth

There are eight Higley 1000 neighborhoods nestled up against the Catalina Mountains. The foothills provide breathtaking vistas of the city to the south and the mountains to the north. All of the wealthiest neighborhoods are found in the central section of the foothills that the Census calls the Catalina Foothills. Casas Adobes to the west is considered Tucson’s first suburb and is predominately lower-middle class. Tanque Verde, a mixture of lower and upper middle class households to the east, is less developed, more open, and in general has lower real estate values than the central foothill area The first elite subdivisions in the Catalina Foothills were layed out by an ambitious Tucson developer by the name of John Murphey in the early 1930s. He called his development Catalina Foothills Estates and the 10 additions he constructed eventually encompassed 1,600 homes that are still represented by a homeowner association to this day. The subdivisions were planned with large lots (three acres or more are common) to maximize privacy. Two of Murphey’s subdivisions are found in the Higley 1000: Numbers 9 & 10. Catalina Foothills Estates #9 has been lumped in with several adjacent newer subdivisions in the Higley 1000, notably the The Foothills I and The Foothills II developments.

Catalina Foothills Estates #10 is a hidden gated community located south of the Westin La Paloma Resort between Hacienda del Sol Road and Pontatoc Road. The original 10 subdivisions are sometimes referred to as “Old” Catalina.

Map of the Catalina Foothills’ Higley 1000 Neighborhoods
View Larger Map of the Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in Catalina Foothills

Touring the wealthiest neighborhoods of the Foothills is difficult because most are gated. Fortunately with the sparse desert landscape and the aid of Microsoft Virtual Earth and Google Earth, it is easy to view the million dollar homes with the million dollar views. The architecture of all of these neighborhoods is essentially the same: sprawling single story modern houses that often have neo-Hispanic architectural motifs. Architectural Review Boards of Homeowner Associations reign supreme in these neighborhoods and the architecture is relentlessly similar.

The amount one pays for a home in these neighborhoods is directly related to one factor above all else: The View. El Encanto Estates and Colonia Solonia on the flats of the central city are 2,500 feet above sea level. The houses at the loftiest elevations of the various foothill neighborhoods are found in the 3,000 to 3,400 foot range. The highest peak to the north in the Catalina Mountains is Mt. Lemmon, at 9,157 feet above sea level.

One of the interesting aspects of some of the foothill neighborhoods is the mixing of house types. Unlike most Higley 1000 neighborhoods, one finds patio homes, townhouses, and condominiums interspersed among the single family homes. The Skyline Country Club has a wide assortment of condominiums and patio homes. I have artfully drawn this neighborhood to exclude these lower income units. I have done the same with the lovely neighborhood of Rancho Sin Vacas by drawing the boundaries to include the estate homes but exclude the assisted living facility and multi-unit housing.

I have included Tucson’s newest luxury gated development, Pima Canyon Estates with the adjacent Rancho Sin Vacas. At the time of the 2000 Census, this neighborhood was just being built and there were few households to be counted. However, with 298 lots that start at $700,000, this neighborhood will definitely become part of the 2010 Census update of the Higley 1000.

The two gated communities with some of the most impressive homes, Cobblestone and The Canyons are relatively small and difficult to photograph. I was able to snap this shot of one of the peripheral houses in The Canyons from outside the walls.

The Canyons, Catalina Foothills

One of the few neighborhoods in the foothills that is not gated is Alta Vista Estates. During my recent visit to Tucson I took several good pictures of the homes in this neighborhood. The pictures below should give one and idea of the foothills landscape and the type of architecture found throughout all ten neighborhoods.

A Typical Home in Alta Vista Estates

Alta Vista Estates, #2

Skyline Bel Aire Estates – My Sensational Tucson Headquarters

I have the fortune of having two wonderful friends that live in the Skyline Bel Aire Estates subdivision in the Catalina Foothills. It has been my base of operation as I have explored the beautiful neighborhoods of the Foothills. Skyline Bel Aire Estates is one of the older neighborhoods in the upper Foothills, having originally been built in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. With a mean household income of $97,895, it is not close to making the Higley 1000 (the minimum mean income is approximately $185,000). However, this desirable neighborhoods has many beautiful houses and the neighborhood is in the midst of slowly being gentrified due to its wonderful views and excellent location.i

African-Americans: Success, but at a Lagging Rate

An analysis of the number of households earning over $200,000 between the 2000 Census and the 2006-8 American Community Survey comes with two large caveats. The first is that the numbers are not inflation adjusted and that the approximate 25% inflation rate between 2000 and 2008 is a strong contributory factor in the large increase in the over $200,000 income category. Secondly, it must be remembered that the American Community Survey’s data was collected at the height of the boom (2006-8), literally at the cusp of the Bush Recession. There is evidence that the real estate bust has disproportionately wreaked havoc on Black neighborhoods, both poor and newly wealthy.

One of the reasons why nouveau riche Black neighborhoods have high foreclosure rates compared to White and Asian-American neighborhoods is the lack of a financial cushion. In the May 2010, a Research and Policy Brief of Brandeis University’s Institute on Assets and Social Policy found that high income Whites have a median wealth of $240,000 (excluding real estate) compared to a meager $18,000 for high income Blacks, (“The Racial Wealth Gap Increases Fourfold” by Shapiro, Meschede, and Sullivan). Having built up significant wealth, White families are much better able to withstand a bad economy than Black families. Even more startling is that the study found that the overall wealth gap between Blacks and Whites has quadrupled over the last 23 years.

In spite of the caveats, the increase in the number of households earning over $200,000 in the United States between 2000 and 2008 is indeed stunning at 88.2%. Furthermore, the differences between the racial categories are vast. African-Americans increased their number of high income households by 48.9%, whereas Asian-Americans increased their representation by  a stunning 181.%%. Although there are 1/3 as many Asian-Americans households as African-American households, the Community Survey found more than twice as many Asian households earning over $200,000.

Table 1: Households Earning Over $200,000, by Race

Washington DC: An Overview

The American Community Survey (2006-8) counted 1,961,388 households in the Washington Metro area. The segregation of the Black and Non-Hispanic White communities has always been historically notable and the newest data illustrates that this pattern is a continuing problem. Prince Georges County, long a haven for the aspiring Black middle class is becoming ever more African-American. Between 2000 and 2008, the percentage of African-Americans in PG has increased from 62.2% of the total households to 66.2%.

In fact, all of the outer counties in the DC area have seen significant increases in all minority groups with the exception of the core communities of the District, Arlington, and Alexandria. The District is certainly headed towards losing it’s Black majority. Between 2000 and 2008, the number of Black households has declined from 55.7% of all households to 51.0%. There were also declines in Alexandria (19.4% to 18.5%) and Arlington (8.6% to 8.2%).

At the same time, the Non-Hispanic White households have decreased throughout the metro area (60.3% to 56.7% of all households) with the exception of the core communities. The district’s White household count increased from 33.6% in the 2000 Census to 37.1% in 2008. Alexandria and Arlington also saw significant increases in the their Non-Hispanic White populations. The root of these changes can generally come under the aegis of gentrification and the expansion of the rent gap in those communities. The term “rent gap” refers to the difference between the value of the existing real estate and what it might go for if developed to it’s “highest use”. The rent gap is particularly noticeable in Alexandria and Arlington because of their  prime geographic locations close to the District and their relatively high socio-economic status. In other words, they are well located and highly desirable, hence extremely attractive to higher income households. This combination forces lower-income people, often minorities, out and replaces them with professionals that can be of any race.

Mean household income change in Alexandria and Arlington bare out my thoughts on racial change. Non-Hispanic Whites saw their median household income leap by +49.7% in Alexandria to $102,857 and by +50.1% in Arlington to$110,421 in the 2006-8 ACS. During the same time African-American households increased by +27.9% to $48,707 in Alexandria and by +38.9% to $55,832 in Arlington. The income gap between Black in White is a startling 2:1 gap.

Table 2: Race in the Washington DC Metro Area

The Highest Income Neighborhoods of the Washington Metro Area

The 68 Higley 1000 neighborhoods are overwhelmingly Non-Hispanic White with strong Asian-American representation. Although Non-Hispanic Whites made-up 60.3% of the Metro area’s households, they made up 87.7% of the Higley 1000 households. The African-American household representation in the wealthiest precincts of metro Washington is negligible at 1.99%.

The highest income neighborhoods are heavily concentrated geographically. Of the 68 Higley 1000 neighborhoods in DC, all but 4 neighborhoods march up both shores of the Potomac River. There are 9 Higley 1000 neighborhoods in the District, 31 in Montgomery County, and 28 in Virginia. All of the Virginian Higley 1000 neighborhoods are found in Fairfax County (26) and Arlington (2).

Map of the Higley 1000 District of Columbia Neighborhoods

View District of Columbia in a larger map

Map of the Higley 1000 Montgomery County Neighborhoods

View Chevy Chase-Bethesda-Potomac in a larger map

Map of the Higley 1000 Arlington-Fairfax County Neighborhoods

View Fairfax County- Potomac River in a larger map

Table 3: The Ten Wealthiest Neighborhoods in Metro Washington

The only four Higley 1000 neighborhoods that are not along the Potomac corridor are all located in Virginia: Old Town in Alexandria, Yacht Haven in Mount Vernon (both found further down the Potomac) as well as two exurban neighborhoods in southern Fairfax: Fountainhead and Ardmore-Brimstone. As any DC resident might expect, McLean neighborhoods dominate the Virginia side of the river and Chevy Chase, Bethesda, and Potomac neighborhoods dominate the Maryland side.

Wealthy African-American Households in Washington D.C.

Although  affluent African-American households make-up a minuscule 2% of the Higley 1000 neighborhoods in the Washington metro area, they are quite prominent in other areas that range from lovely gracious older neighborhoods in the District to the nouveau riche McMansions of Woodmore, Maryland. In fact, the American Community Survey shows that the number of Black households with incomes of over $200,000 in the Washington area are second only to New York City’s metro area and of course, the overall population of the New York’s metro area is three times larger than Washington.

Table 4: African-American Households with Incomes over $200,000 by Metro Area and Central City (ACS 2006-8)

Yet another way to breakdown Black affluence is to look at the counties in United States with the highest number of households with incomes over $200,000 and the undisputed leader is Prince Georges County. PG handily beats outs #2 Los Angeles County— a remarkable fact considering LA County has 10 times as many people!

Table 5: The Thirty-Three Counties in the United States with the Largest Number of Households earning over $200,000

There are three geographic clusters of Black affluence in the Washington metro area. Two are located in Prince Georges County: the Fort Washington area and a cluster of neighborhoods that are located in the Lake Arbor-Woodmore-Bowie area. The most affluent string of neighborhoods with a strong African-American presence is found just to the east of Rock Creek Park in the District of Columbia.

The three clusters together have 20 neighborhoods and are approximately 2/3 African-American and 1/3 Non-Hispanic White. Asians and Hispanics are statistically insignificant in all three clusters. When the twenty neighborhoods are aggregated, the 2000 Census shows that the White population has a small mean household income advantage ($123,870 for Whites vs. $114,080 for Blacks). The highest income neighborhood for African-Americans in the entire metro area is found in Colonial Village ($196,587), a gracious and charming neighborhood featuring lovely commodious homes that were generally built from the 1920s into the 1950s.

Table 6: Three Clusters of African-American Wealth in the Washington Metro Area

Map of the Affluent African-American Neighborhoods in the District of Columbia

View Washington DC - Wealthy Black Neighborhoods in a larger map

Map of the Affluent African-American Neighborhoods in the Fort Washington Area

View Prince George's-Fort Washington in a larger map

Map of the Affluent African-American Neighborhoods in the Lake Arbor-Woodmore-Bowie area

View Woodmore-Bowie-Lake Arbor in a larger map

The story of Miami-Dade County’s transformation into a Hispanic majority county is a twenty year old story. The county was at the tipping point when the 1990 Census was taken and that tally showed that Miami-Dade was 49.2% Latino. That grew to 56.4% in the 2000 Census and the 2008 ACS shows that trend has continued and the percentage of Hispanics has now grown to 61.8%. Large increases in the Hispanic population in both Broward and Palm Beach counties have now made Latinos a plurality, if not a majority,  in the three county metro area.

African-Americans and Asian-Americans both have a growing presence in the metro area. Blacks now make up 19.2% of the population, up from 18.9% in 2000. The relatively small but fast growing Asian-American population increased to 2.1% from 1.7%.

Please note that Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach County will be explored in forthcoming postings. This posting is about the overall three county metro area and Miami-Dade.

Table One: Miami Metro Population by Race

Miami’s Latinos: A Virtual OAS (Organization of American States)

The Miami metro area has come to be defined by the large contingent of Cuban-Americans that have emigrated to the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County in great numbers over the last 50 years. Although Cubans make up the largest single ancestry group of all Latinos with 42.3% of the metro area’s  Latino population, the constellation of other Latino groups are actually growing faster than the Cuban population.

The Colon Market in the historic Cuban district of Miami. Photo by copelaes. Click to visit the original photo on Flickr.

The growth of the Cuban population has been spasmodic due to the shifting nature of Cuban-American political tensions. Cuba’s upper-middle class departed en masse once Castro began confiscating their material wealth. This first wave, the Historicos, were the well-educated upper-middle to upper class Cubans that lost everything when Communism socialized their possessions. Miami was the logical destination of choice for many of these political and economic refugees. Most started with very little material wealth but an abundance of talent and ability.

They first settled in the central city of Miami bringing a Latin vitality to Calle Ocho (8th Street). However, it wasn’t long before the suburban migration began in earnest. The migration to places like Coral Gables, Doral, Key Biscayne, and Miami Lakes was a natural progression for an upwardly mobile element of the Latino community. The migration of successful Cubans (and other Hispanics) to Miami’s best neighborhoods was helped along by the continuing in-migration of Cubans from a much lower socio-economic background (e.g. the Mariel Boat Lift). This may also account for the steeply rising population of affluent Latinos moving to the better neighborhoods in Broward and Palm Beach.

It is not surprising that the well educated and hard-working Cuban minority was soon knocking at the door of financial success and buying into Miami’s traditional elite neighborhoods, overwhelmingly populated by Non-Hispanic Whites.

No suburb was more a preserve of the traditional elite than Coral Gables. By 2008, Hispanics, mainly Cubans, have now reached numerical parity with the Non-Hispanic White population (of mainly German, Irish, English, and Italian extraction).

Hispanics moved increasingly into “old money” (what passes for old money in Florida, anyway) places like Coral Gables and Pinecrest, as well as the out-sized nouveau riche waterfront mansions of Miami’s rich in places such as Coral Gables’ Cocoplum, Key Biscayne, and Miami Beach’s Star Island.

Beyond the Cubans, Miami’s other Hispanic Migrants

Undoubtedly, every country’s immigration story is different as they provide a steady stream of newcomers to the Miami  area. Puerto Ricans make up the second largest group of Latinos and they are by and large economic migrants that lack critically needed skill to prosper quickly.

On the other hand, the influx of Colombians and Venezuelans most likely have a large contingent of those countries wealthy White elite. They are escaping endemic violence in Colombia and Hugo Chavez’s erratically careening march to dictatorship dressed up as Socialism. Like their Cuban compadres, I’m sure they hope to return to their native land as soon as sanity is restored. The big question is… at what point does temporary residence become permanent in the wait for things to get “better” at home?

Table Two: The Kaleidoscope Of Miami Metro’s Latino Population

Miami’s Huge Increase in Households Earning Over $200,000

When pondering the huge increase in the number of high income households,  one has to keep in mind that the American Community Survey data was collected during the years of 2006, 2007, and 2008. In other words, at the height of  the real estate bubble. Florida’s economy was flying high.

As is well known, Florida has been staggered by the collapse in the housing market and the latest state population estimates show an out-migration from the state. As a state that has predicated its view of itself on an endless vista of sunny growth, it has come as a rude shock. Don’t feel too bad Florida, things are worse in Nevada and Arizona!

In spite of the timing of people reporting their incomes from 2006-8, the huge increase in the number of  households reporting an income of more than $200,000 is staggering. The number of households in the metro area increased a mere 5.3% between 2000 and 2008, the number of +$200,000 households increased 63.8%. This is significantly lower than the growth of  this category in the country (84.9%).

Non-Hispanic Whites may be at parity with Hispanics when it comes to numbers, but they dominate the wealth sweepstakes. The American Community Survey showed the Miami metro area had 96,969 households with an income over $200,000 (out of a total of 2,006,818 households). Non-Hispanic Whites had 69,380 of these incomes or 71.5% of the total. Latinos had 21,599 of these high income households or 22.3%. The growth in this high income sector shows Latinos gaining on Non-Hispanic Whites . The number of  Latino households earning over $200,000 between 2000 and 2008 grew by101.9%, double the  percentage increase by Non-Hispanic Whites (50.6%).

African-Americans make up a very small portion of high income households with only 3,146 households reporting an income over $200,000. Blacks make up 19.2% of the three county Metro area’s population and yet only 3.2% of the households with incomes over $200,000. Asian-Americans make up a mere 2.1% of the Miami metro’s population and 2.3% of the high income households. Due to the paucity of  affluent Black and Asian-American households, the rest of this essay will concentrate on Non-Hispanic White and Latino households.

Patterns of Wealth: Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Palm Beach

When one examines the three counties and cities with over 20,000 people, there are some interesting patterns in the growth of wealthy households between 2000 and 2008. Table Three shows that the number of households earning over $200,000 are fairly evenly split between Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties. Broward showed an extraordinary growth in high income households (+85.8%) and Palm Beach lagging at a growth rate of 45.1%. Palm Beach County’s growth may lag a bit but it is still the wealthiest of the three counties in terms of median household income and it also continues to have the highest proportion of wealthy households.

Table three lists all of the cities in the metro area with over 1,000 households earning more than $200,000. Note that two of the metro areas wealthiest suburbs (Palm Beach and Pinecrest) are not enumerated for 2008, as they don’t have the requisite 20,000 population to be broken out separately in the  American Community Survey.

Table Three: Where the Wealthy Live in Miami Metro

1  2000 Census figures for recently incorporated Palmetto Bay are a composite for the previous CDP’s (unincorporated places) of Cutler and East Perrine.

The Changing Face of Wealth in Metro Miami

Every major city in the metro area showed a much larger growth in wealthy households than total households. Whereas the metro’s number of households grew by 5.3% between 200o and 2008, the number of wealthy households earning over $200,000 grew by 63.8%.

An art deco hotel in Miami Beach. Photo by Stig Nygaard. Click to visit the original at Flickr.

As most Miamians know Miami Beach’s resurgence is very noticeable. Although the number of households actually declined by 10.3%, the number of high income households increased by 78.7%. The building boom that has so altered Miami Beach’s architecture has also altered it’s socio-economic make up.

The ACS found the number of Non-Hispanic White  +$200,000 households increased to 2,298 of Miami Beach’s households, an increase of 64.3%. Meanwhile, Latinos saw a 91.0% increase to 785 households  making that sum or more.

Miramar, a fast growing southern Broward County suburb showed the highest percentage increase of high income families (+336.9%). Miramar has a significant African-American population as well as large contingents of rapidly increasing  Latinos and decreasing Non-Hispanic Whites. The number of Hispanic households earning more than $200,000 increased an astonishing 424.8%. Table 4 shows the vast increases by Latinos earning high income by county and place with over 20,000 people.

Table Four: Increase in Latino households earning over $200,000 by county and place: ACS 2008

The Hierarchy of Water in Miami Metro’s Wealthy Neighborhoods

The physical of geography of Miami metro’s three counties’ highest income neighborhoods is difficult to capture by the Census Bureau’s system of tracts and block groups. For the most part, waterfront property and it’s many gradations of status reign supreme in determining the value of housing. At the top of the hierarchy are two types of lots that have their charms depending on your personal taste. Atlantic Ocean lots are scarce and extremely expensive. Most are so valuable that they are monopolized by high rises. Equally desirable are intra-coastal lots that have the added advantage of allowing for a place to moor your yacht.

Palm Island in Miami. Photo by Patrick Swint. Click to see the original at Flickr.

The endless miles of canals and faux lakes that have been excavated to create more waterfront seems to be valued by how far it is away from the oceanfront. Naturally, the further from the ocean, the lower the value.

The end result is an extremely linear geographic pattern of wealth with houses on water costing two to three times as much as there landlocked neighbors. All three counties have a series of spectacularly wealthy small communities on the barrier islands that face the Atlantic. Starting with Key Biscayne in the south and working it’s way to the grand daddy of them all, Palm Beach.

Further complications to accurately capturing wealth in the Miami metro area are the high number of seasonal homes. Income is counted at a household’s “first home”, and therefore many of the beautiful homes in the Miami area are not counted for income purposes.

Yet another complication is the large number of retirees: even wealthy retirees have lower incomes than people in their working prime.

Finally, there is the mixed use of the highly desirable waterfront locations: endless high-rises dot the waterfront and they inevitably bring mean household income down whether they are rentals or condominiums. The Brickell Avenue corridor has witnessed a boom in high rise construction (until recently) and it is not represented in the Higley 1000 despite a large array of very expensive condos.

Miami-Dade’s Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

There are two main areas of Higley1000 neighborhoods  in Miami-Dade, the Coral Gables-Pinecrest nexus and the luxury housing found on Miami Beach.

Coral Gable’s expensive neighborhoods range from the traditional villages built when the city was first developed by George Merrick in the 1920s Florida land boom, to more recent gated communities along the Biscayne Bay waterfront.

Merrick’s planned suburb included the  grand Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel as well as the University of Miami. The original 1920s homes  featured the eclectic architectural style that was popular at that time. They were available in various “villages”. Three of these older neighborhoods from the Twenties that are ranked in the Higley 1000 have significant Latino populations. These neighborhoods are #477, Southern Colonial Village (43.4% Hispanic in 2000); #486, Dutch South African Village (30.6% Hispanic); and a neighborhood  that came in at #683 and that I have dubbed Granada Golf Course West (47.9% Hispanic).

The large Block Group that runs along Biscayne Bay is home to Coral Gables’ nouveau riche McMansions. The neighborhood that I have dubbed Cocoplum-Gables Estates is actually made up of a dozen gated developments along the waterfront. These gated communities rank a lofty 64th on the Higley 1000 and are 42.9% Latino.

Pinecrest, is a newly incorporated suburb. Following a  successful campaign by Key Biscayne for incorporation, many of the more affluent areas of Miami-Dade County quickly followed suit. In the course of a few years, Pinecrest, Doral, Miami Lakes, Palmetto Bay and even downscale Miami Gardens made successful bids for incorporation.

Pinecrest, often referred to as “Old Cutler” before incorporation has some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Miami area. I have named the Higley 1000 neighborhoods in Pinecrest for the largest subdivision names in each Block Group. The Pinecrest neighborhoods also have a  significant number of Latino households: #25, Rockdale Estates-Cutler Bay Estates (38.5% Latino); #44, Devonwood-Bayridge Estates (16.9%); # 490, Mitchell Manors-Collins Heights (31.9%), and, #585, Rollingwood Estates-Town and Country Estates (15.9%).

Coconut Grove (#348), Miami’s premiere central city neighborhood of wealth had a surprisingly low 9.8% of its households categorized as Latino in the 2000 Census.

Map of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in the Coral Gables-Pinecrest Area

View Coral Gables - Pinecrest in a larger map

Miami Beach

The glitzy transformation of Miami Beach’s South Beach neighborhood over the last 20 years has been stunning. However Miami Beach has always featured a wide array of wealthy single family island neighborhoods far away figuratively, if not physically from the pulsating Ocean Drive.

The wealthiest of these island neighborhoods is Fisher Island (#18 in the Higley1000). It’s is relatively “new” in that it has built out over the last 20 years on an island that was originally owned by the Vanderbilts. The Fisher Island Club is located in the renovated Vanderbilt mansion. It is located at the southern tip of Miami Beach and is accessible solely by ferry or private boat. It is extremely luxurious and primarily made up of condominiums… a rarity for such a lofty ranking in the Higley 1000.

Other exclusive island neighborhoods in Miami Beach include the celebrity laden Star Island as well as Hibiscus Island, Palm Island, the Sunset Isles, and La Gorce.

Indian Creek Village is a ultra-exclusive island (and a tiny incorporated place) in Biscayne Bay. It consists of 35 mansions surrounding a golf course. Due to it’s tiny size and the fact that most of the homes are second homes, it does not make the Higley 1000.

Map of Miami Beach Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

View Miami Beach in a larger map

One of the aspects that makes Milwaukee so unique is that for much of its historical development, Milwaukee was guided by the socialist leanings of its German heritage. The city is blessed with many beautiful landscaped parkways and a large park system that is a direct reflection of a Germanic concern for a beautiful built environment that is accessible to rich and poor alike.

The string of neighborhoods north of the public lakefront parks has been the home of Milwaukee’s wealthiest families since the 19th Century and continues to be the center of Milwaukee’s social elite. Industrialists and Beer Barons built palatial homes along Milwaukee’s alpha street, Lake Drive. Think of Lake Drive as similar to Chicago’s famed Sheridan Road on a smaller scale. As Milwaukee’s elite moved north along the lake, River Hills, a pastoral suburb with large lots, became the favored destination. Although River Hills is not directly on the lake, it is the home to the only country club that matters to Milwaukee’s wealthiest families, the Milwaukee Country Club.

Wauwatosa, Wisconsin: The Birthplace of the Higley 1000

I grew up in the middle class suburb of Wauwatosa on the west side of Milwaukee. During the fifties and sixties, Wauwatosa was a large suburb (56,000) singularly lacking in any minorities. My High-School (Wauwatosa East) was almost 100% non-Hispanic White. Talk about homogeneous!…. we had no Blacks, one Latino, and one Asian in a High-School of 1,300. At the time, the city was overwhelmingly Republican and conservative. Like all older, inner suburbs, it’s politics have become much more Democratic or time, if not much more diverse.

Thirty years later Wauwatosa has shrunk to 44,0000– a large decline that is typical of close-in suburbs across the United States. The quality of Wauwatosa’s neighborhoods have not declined along with the population and if anything they have actually improved. The community is still overwhelmingly non-Hispanic White, but there have been some minority inroads into the community. The city was 92.9% non-Hispanic White, 2.5% Black, 2.3% Asian and 1.8% Latino in the 2000 Census. Although the vast majority of Tosans are lower-middle class, there are some lovely upscale neighborhoods in the city. The most noteworthy is the Washington Highlands.

Map of Washington Highlands

View Larger Map of Washington Highlands

The Washington Highlands: Wauwatosa’s Gem

The Washington Highlands was one of America’s first themed and planned subdivisions. “Before its development in 1916 the Highlands (as it is commonly called) was part of a parcel of rural property owned by Milwaukee brewer Captain Frederick Pabst. On the 200 acre farm, Pabst grew hops for brewing and bred large, fast trotting Percheron horses that pulled his beer wagons.

The property gradually became a rural oasis surrounded by development, and after Pabst’s death in 1904 his heirs decided to subdivide the residual 133 acre farm. They hired renowned German city planner Werner Hegemann to design a model residential neighborhood for the site.

Working with American landscape architect Elbert Peets, Hegemann created a plan using the advanced concepts of England’s new Garden City movement. The objective of the movement was to use an overall master plan to obtain healthful, peaceful environment shielded form the intrusions of industrialization.

The Washington Highlands is considered a premier example of Garden City Planning. Laid out to minimize through-traffic, the curving streets meander along the site’s naturally hilly topography. Numerous private parks help preserve the neighborhood’s rolling landscape, as do “split-grad” boulevards (in which on one of a roadway sits as much as 10 feet fighter than its sister lane).

From the beginning , “the Highlands” were home to both the professionals and worker/tradesmen. Hegemann’s plan for the community provided a central core of large lots to accommodate affluent Milwaukeans, as well as a perimeter of smaller lots for dwellings of more modest means. (Editors note: the perimeter working classes duplexes have been left out of the equation in the Higley 1000).

Building standards and design controls governed lot size, structure design and placement. Nevertheless, the residential architecture of this beautiful old neighborhood’s 350 plus homes is varied, and includes 14 styles popular during the 1920s and 1930s.” (Lynch & Lynch, 1993).

Today the Washington Highlands maintains its cache as the best neighborhood in Wauwatosa and the use of themed streets (Washington Circle, Martha Washington Drive, and Revere Drive) have become commonplace throughout the country. However, this was a novel idea in 1916 and the sub-division can be thought of as a truly unique neighborhood and design original.

Milwaukee’s Aristocratic Retreat: Pine Lake (aka Chenequa)

Chenequa, Wisconsin clearly leads all other municipalities in the state according to 2008 Wisconsin state figures of mean adjusted income. Chenequa is a tiny incorporated village surrounding Pine Lake in suburban Waukesha County. Pine Lake was the favored “lake country” destination of Milwaukee’s elite in the early 20th Century. It has followed the common historical path of transforming itself from a second home place to a first home place over the years. None-the-less, there were still 57 out of 283 homes vacant at the time of the 2000 Census. My assumption is that although some of them may have been for sale and thus empty, most were second homes. The village of Chenequa was incorporated in 1928 and has maintained a single family residential policy since its inception.

Map of Chenequa and Oconomowoc Lake

View Larger Map of Chenequa and Oconomowoc Lake

Each year the State of Wisconsin publishes a list of every city, village, and town’s personal income tax returns. The Wisconsin’s Revenue Department’s figures are different from the Higley 1000 list as my list is derived from the 2000 Census and the Wisconsin list is published annually from Wisconsin tax returns. The Wisconsin numbers are for 2006 and 2008.

It is important to remember that (as detailed in “Methodology”) the mean household income statistics from the 2000 Census are not actual mean household income figures and have a tendency to play down great wealth by limiting the amount a household can claim to approximately $2,000,000 dollars. It appears that there is no statistical rounding to minimize wealth in the Wisconsin Department of Revenue figures and that their statistics include every personal taxpayer in a municipality.

The following is a list of the 10 wealthiest communities in the Milwaukee metro area. Note the huge gains at the top of the list as the affects of the Bush recession had only begun to show up in the 2008 statistics. Although the filthy rich in Chenequa and River Hills were still seeing large gains in income, the mere upper-middle class professional of Bayside and Elm Grove were already starting to see their incomes decline.

Mean Income by Individual Tax Return, Wisc. Dept. of Revenue (2006 & 2008)

Community                                          2008             _           2006

1. Chenequa                                   $892,425                   $825,209
2. River Hills                                  $542,158                    $418,869
3. Oconomowoc Lake                   $362,702                   $307,906
4. Lac La Belle                                $212,205                   $172,854
5. Fox Point                                    $185,094                   $146,380
6. Mequon                                       $159,112                    $153,859
7. Bayside                                        $156,549                   $157,959
8. Elm Grove                                   $138,242                   $143,481
9. Delafield (Town)                        $136,484                   $127,338
10. Whitefish Bay                             $134,356                   $131,090

Elm Grove: A Sylvan Retreat in the Western Suburbs

There are few Elm’s left in Elm Grove, but this delightful little suburb is still heavily wooded, and the village provides a lovely retreat for it’s 6,000 residents. Elm Grove is surrounded on three sides by it’s much larger neighbor Brookfield. The two communities share a highly rated school system (Elmbrook), but they are very different in the quality of their residential areas. Brookfield is a standard issue, builder built agglomeration of upscale sub-divisions. It also provides the essential big box shopping for the area on the typically overbuilt suburban arterial, Bluemound Road.

Elm Grove’s gracious homes are architecturally unique and the homes on its grandest street, Highland Avenue, hearken back to the eclectic period of the pre-Depression era. Although Elm Grove really doesn’t have any downscale neighborhoods, Indian Hills Estates is noteworthy in having the largest and most impressive homes found in this little village.

Map of Indian Hills Estates, Elm Grove

View Larger Map of Indian Hills Estates

Map of North Shore Cluster (The East Side of Milwaukee to the Mequon Waterfront)

View Larger Map of the North Shore Cluster

All of Milwaukee’s highest income neighborhoods are almost exclusively Non-Hispanic White.  Massey’s Index of Dissimilarity is a statistical method to measure racial segregation and Milwaukee (along with Detroit and Chicago) is ranked among the most rigidly segregated metro areas in the country. Asian’s and Hispanics were not found in significant numbers in the state of Wisconsin when the 2000 Census was taken nor are they present in its wealthiest places.

Although Milwaukee has a large Black population, African-Americans remain isolated and segregated from the suburban islands of affluence. It is also interesting to note that there are few minorities found in the exclusive East Side of the central city. African-American’s makeup an insignificant .7% of the households in Milwaukee’s 11 Higley 1000 neighborhoods.

In summary, Milwaukee faces an uncertain future that is similar to many of the former industrial powerhouses found in the upper Great Lakes. The goal of the city’s leadership is to follow the path of their dynamic neighbor Chicago and avoid becoming a failed city that is on unfortunate display in Detroit.

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.

Chicago has always been famous for its skyline and no small plans are in the offing. Trump’s new 1,362 foot tower is nearing completion on the Chicago River and ground was recently broken on the Chicago Spire, a 2,000 foot tall condominium tower. With 1,200 units to sell in a difficult market, it will be interesting to see if Santiago Calatrava’s tour de force will rise from Lake Shore Drive. For a wonderful tour of this spectacular tower click here: The Chicago Spire. If completed, the Spire will be the second tallest building in the world after the Burj Dubai (2,625 feet) currently under construction in Abu Dhabi.

Before I sound too much like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Chicago does have its fair quotient of the typical ills affecting large American cities: endemic poverty, racial strife, a nasty problem with police corruption, and the usual dreadful public school system. MCIC, a Chicago research and consulting organization terms 22 of the 77 recognized city neighborhoods as either “Emerging Low Income” or in the worst category “Desertification”.. swathes of despair amidst a generally improving city.

On a brighter note, the city, somewhat imperfectly, tackles its problems head on under the able and popular lead of Mayor Daley, a man that may have some flaws, but all would agree has the best interests of his beloved city at heart. Yes, I am a totally biased observer of Chicago. I have seen the city bloom before my very eyes over the last 36 years from dreary and tired to exciting and new.

City vs. Suburb

As typical of American cities in the Northeast and Midwest, the city of Chicago has dramatically lost population from the heights of its industrial heyday. Locked into a mere 224 square miles, the population has dropped from 3,620,962 in 1950 to 2,783,726 in 1990. After a rally in the 90s to 2,896,016, it is again on the decline as the Census has estimated the city’s population at 2,833,321 in 2006.

In that same period of time the population of the suburbs, with no limits to there physical growth, have increased from 1,874,402 (1950) to 6,691,996 (2006). Chicagoland’s Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area now stretches from Wisconsin’s Kenosha County on the North to Kankakee County in the South and well into Indiana to the Southeast.

There has been a strikingly divergence in the suburbanization among racial groups. The 2000 Census showed that Non-Hispanic Whites have suburbanized the most with 79.7% of households found beyond the city limits, whereas 63.5% of Asians, 47.5% Of Hispanics, and 37.2% of African-Americans are suburbanites.

When one looks at the city/suburb contrasts of the wealthiest households (over $200,000 mean household income), the numbers shed some light on the paucity of wealthy Blacks and Hispanics found in the suburbs. No less than 83.4% of the wealthiest category of Asian households have moved out of the city. This percentage is even greater than 79.8% the $200,000+ Non-Hispanic Whites that have left the city. Wealthy Latino (55.4%) and Black households (47.8%) are much less likely to have moved out of the city.

Racial Patterns in the Higley 1000 Neighborhoods of Chicago

There are 70 Chicago neighborhoods in the Higley 1000. Sixty-nine of these are in the suburbs as only one Block Group is found in the city in Lincoln Park. Even the core of the Gold Coast, Chicago’s most exclusive neighborhood, did not have a high enough mean household income to be included in the list. This is another case where the homogeneity of the suburbs triumphs the diversity of city life, even in the most gilded precints.

There were 45,587 households found in these most elite of suburban neighborhoods of Chicago. The racial breakdown: 93.3% Non-Hispanic White, 4.0% Asian, 1.1% Hispanic, and 0.9% African-American. Asian-Americans are heavily clustered in Oak Brook, a nouveau riche suburb in the Western suburbs of Du Page County. Oak Brook is famous for two things in Chicago: the headquarters of McDonalds and polo.

There are three main clusters of suburban wealth in the Chicago area: the North Shore, the Barrington Area, and the West Suburban area. There are separate postings on the Barrington Area and the West Suburban area of Chicago centered on Hinsdale and Oak Brook.

Two neighborhoods are found in the South Suburban area: Flossmoor Country Club and a neighborhood just South of the Prestwick Country Club in Frankfort. I have a word on the South Suburban area at the end of the West Suburban article.

The North Shore

View a Larger Map of Higley 1000 neighborhoods in North Shore Chicago

As every Chicagoan knows, the North Shore of Chicago is where the true movers and shakers of suburban of power and influence reside. Sheridan Road is the gateway to a sumptuous swathe of suburbia that bursts out Chicago’s East Rodger Park neighborhood and sweeps around lakeside Calvary Cemetery into Evanston. After a couple of blocks of preliminary apartments in the Oakton neighborhood of Southern Evanston, Sheridan Road bursts into Evanston’s gorgeous 19th Century mansions that are sprinkled with just about every imaginable style of residential architecture from Victorian Gothic to Modernist. Sheridan Road proceeds 27 miles north through the suburban communities that are the epitome old Social Register families and the nouveau riche alike: Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, and Lake Forest to name a few. The parade of wealth ends abruptly just past the Shoreline Country Club in Lake Bluff in impoverished North Chicago, a largely African-American community that is home to the Great Lakes Naval Station.

The heavily wooded ravines and dramatic bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan are dotted with the mansions of Chicago’s elite. As I chronicled in my book, Power, Privilege, and Place: The Geography of the American Upper Class, Lake Forest near the northern end of Sheridan Road has the largest number of Social Register families, distantly followed by Winnetka. The Onwentsia Club in the center of Lake Forest is at the heart of North Shore society.

View Larger Map of Indian Hill Club neighborhood

The wealthiest neighborhood in Chicago is the Indian Hill Club-Woodley Road neighborhood that lies partly in Southern Winnetka and a small patch of unincorporated New Trier Township. With a mean household income of $459,070, this sylvan patch of suburban bliss is ranked 5th in the Higley 1000. Although the Woodley Road enclave is marked “Private, Residents only”, this researcher was able to make a pass through unmolested by the authorities.

Of Chicago’s 70 neighborhoods found in the Higley 1000, 39 are found on the North Shore. The racial makeup is overwhelmingly Non-Hispanic White (95.3%) and there are few neighborhoods with significant Asian populations except a couple of areas in western Northbrook near the Tri-State Tollway. Northbrook is a second tier suburb in that is has no lakefront and is generally less affluent. The neighborhoods of Stonebrook-Woodmere (12.2% Asian) is the only place on the North Shore that showed any racial diversity in the 2000 Census.

The White population of the North Shore is not technically WASP in the sense that people of English ancestry dominate. WASPs make up only 22.1% of Kenilworth’s population and as low as 10.7% of the population in heavily Jewish Glencoe. The two largest ethnic groups found on the North Shore are Irish and German. One of the reasons why one can see so many blondes driving BMWs may have something to do with the rather large numbers of people of Scandinavian and Dutch ancestry that live in the area (around 10%).

In Conclusion

Chicago’s wealthiest suburban neighborhoods are heavily clustered on the North Shore where 39 of Chicago’s 70 Higley 1000 neighborhoods are located. The expansion of this elite slice of Chicagoland is blocked to the north by poor North Chicago and blue-collar Waukegan and has expanded to the West towards the old farming town of Barrington in southern Lake County. As is typical of the largest of American cities, there is more than one sector of high income growth and Chicago is no different. To the West there is a substantial cluster of wealthy neighborhoods centered on old money Hinsdale and nouveau riche Oak Brook. The southern suburbs have faced a decline in socio-economic status over the last 35 years as they have become increasingly African-American. It is important to remember that these neighborhoods are still beautiful, they just have not kept up with the Jones!

Indianapolis’ best neighborhoods are very segregated. When one compares the racial make-up of Indianapolis’ highest income neighborhoods with the racial make-up of the entire Metro area, there is an glaring lack of Black households found in the wealthy neighborhoods. Asians and Non-Hispanic Whites are greatly over-represented. This is a common pattern that is found throughout the country and the big industrial cities of the Midwest are no exception.

The Metro are is primarily Non-Hispanic White and Black (82.9% and 13.2% respectively). Asians (1.0%) and Hispanics (1.7%) were found in small numbers in the metro area. (2000 Census) The six Higley 1000 neighborhoods are 91.3% Non-Hispanic White, 4.1% Black, 3.0% Asian, and 1.2% Hispanic.

From Meridian-Kessler to the Village of WestClay

I never tire of driving up Meridian Street in the city and viewing all the wonderful mansions that were built in the city’s industrial heyday. They are typical of their period: Eclectic, Georgian, and Tudor Revivals amidst countless variations of bourgeois good taste.

This trip I wanted to see just if the adjoining North-South streets of Illinois and Pennsylvania (and the lower 40′s) of Washington Boulevard were equally beautiful and well maintained as the big houses on Indianapolis’ Alpha Street, Meridian Street. The adjacent North-South arterials are lovely and for the most part, nicely maintained. The quality of the neighborhood falls off rather quickly past Illinois to the West and Washington to the East, but it is clear that many of Indianapolis’ elite still want to live in the neighborhood that has been christened Meridian-Kessler. I made Meridian-Kessler a Higley Designated Place as the elite homes are strewn across several Census Tracts and too many Block Groups to make any sense of the mean income numbers. The wealth of the area is obscured by the inclusion of downscale houses and apartment buildings in the Census Tracts and Block Groups on the East and West sides of the rather narrow strip of elite homes running North from 40th Street to 56th Street centered on Meridian.

One of the more unusual tiny enclaves of old wealth in Indianapolis is the 40 house enclave of Golden Hill. Golden Hill was developed in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century and has working class homes immediately to it’s east and south. Somehow, this island of wealth has managed to maintain its cache and is still a lovely neighborhood. Like Crows Nest and North Crows Nest (18 Households; Population 42, LOL), Golden Hill is to small to register on the Higley 1000, but none-the-less it is certainly worth a quick drive through if you are interested in historic neighborhoods.

On this trip I did not visit the tiny, most elite of Indianapolis’ suburbs, the aforementioned Crows Nest. When the city merged with Marion County in the early 70s, a bevy of small and micro suburbs retained their identity and enough autonomy that the Census enumerates them separately from Indianapolis. Crows Nest is one those tiny enclaves. Crows Nest consists of a mere 34 households, found primarily along Sunset Lane. This is where one finds the truly impressive mansions of Indy’s elite residing in baronial splendor. With a mean income of $248,705, Crows Nest would come in at 238th in the Higley 1000, if it was big enough to qualify for the list (a suburb or neighborhood has to have at least 100 households to qualify for the Higley 1000). The sampling procedure that the Census Bureau uses for income (one of every six households) means one has to take the Mean Household Income statistics of tiny places like Crows Nest with a grain of salt. In the case of Crows Nest, the Mean Household Income would be drawn from 5 households! If one of those five households were live-in servants (with separate housekeeping facilities), it would skew the mean income statistics hopelessly downwards. Considering the size of the homes, my bet is that there is live-in help and therefore the income numbers are useless. Oh well, it is an imperfect world!

Further North on Meridian, between 64th and 82nd Streets are two newer elite suburbs that share the same semi-autonomous status as Crows Nest. Meridian Hills straddles Meridian Street and is filled with commodious ranches, forgettable architecture and an occasional teardown. Meridian Hills mean household income of $154, 832 was too low to qualify for the Higley 1000. Meridian Hills is upper-middle class and pleasant enough, but rather uninspiring compared to the grand mansions of Meridian Street to the South!

The tiny village of Williams Creek found just north of Meridian Hills ranks #298 on the Higley 1000 (at this writing). Williams Creek appears to be simply an incorporated sub-division. With a household count of 155, Williams Creek just made the cut in qualifying for my list (minimum 100). Most of the homes appear to be post-World War II and they are uniformly large and lovely.

I snapped this picture of what has to be the biggest lawn in Williams Creek. The cross hatching design of the mowing of this lawn was wonderful! Click the picture for a full size view

I didn’t get a chance to drive by Lake Kesslerwood and its smaller sibling Lake Charlevoix (Higley 1000 #532) on this trip. From Microsoft Live Local it appears that the approximately 200 homes built around appears to be a man-made lake diverted from the White River. Lake Kesslerwood-Lake Charlevoix is the only neighborhood in Indianapolis where African-Americans households are found proportionately as they are in the Metro area in general. Just south of Lake Kesslerwood and Lake Charlevoix one finds an exclusive subdivision by the name of Brendonwood.  According to the Homeowner’s Association website, Brendonwood’s 113 homes were built starting in 1895. It was formally incorporated as a planned “City Beautiful” subdivision in 1917 and the heavily wooded site not only features homes that are on 1-7 acres, but there is even a 9 hole golf club for the residents pleasure.

In the tradition of Homer Hoyt’s pioneering studies in the 30s, Indianapolis’ sector and wedge growth for elite homes has moved North on the Meridian axis across the Hamilton County line into the nouveau riche suburb of Carmel and it’s subordinate township of Clay.

Carmel had 37,802 people in the 2000 Census and Clay Township had an additional 26,907 residents. The Census estimated that as of 2005 Carmel had grown strongly to an estimated 59,243 (Census estimate, 2005). A good portion of Carmel’s growth can be attributed to annexing a large chunk of the Northwest section of Clay Township. Clay Township has correspondingly lost population over the last five years to an estimated 19,147. Carmel and Clay Township together account for the vast majority of the new McMansions in Indy’s suburbs. Carmel is geographically boxed off with Zionsville to the West, Westfield and Noblesville to the North. To the East, Carmel is geographically hemmed in by the exploding lower-middle class sub-divisions of Fishers. It makes sense for the city to annex West and eventually take in all of Clay Township.

At this writing, the Southwest corner of Clay Township maintains its independence. There is one Higley 1000 neighborhoods in the township: Crooked Stick Golf Course-Winterwood (Mean Household Income:$221, 914). Twin Lakes-Laurelwood (Mean Income: 182,915) was close, but no cigar. Both of these “neighborhoods” are collections of sub-divisions.

The Crooked Stick-Winterwood neighborhood is a combination of sub-divisions around the Crooked Stick Golf Course (e.g. Crooked Stick Estates, Spring Run Estates, Sutton Place, & Huntington Chase) as well as the the smaller but more exclusive gated neighborhoods of Winterwood and Estancia to the East.
I drove into the tiny ungated neighborhood of the Queens Manor and snapped this impressively fountained arriviste mansion. The lots are huge and the houses ranged from the pictured monument to wealth (left), to more prosaic large, run-of-the-mill houses found in anywhere upper middle Class America.

The other Higley 1000 neighborhood found in unincorporated Clay County I dubbed Twin Lakes-Laurelwood (Mean Household Income $182,915). This neighborhood was was named for the Twin Lakes Golf Course to the west of this block group and Laurelwood on the eastern edge. Laurelwood is gated filled with large homes and is similar to the equally impressive gated community of Coppergate found in the Block Group that statistically makes up this neighborhood.

The Northwest quadrant of Clay Township that Carmel recently annexed has a plethora of standard issue upper middle class sub-divisions such as Hayden Run and Laurel Lakes.

The wealthiest neighborhood in Indianapolis as reported in the 2000 Census was part of Clay Township at the time of the Census. It is now part of the city of Carmel. I have dubbed this neighborhood Claridge Farms-Springmill Ridge after two of the larger sub-divisions of this area. With an Median household income of $267,013, it is the wealthiest Block Group in the Indianapolis metro area.

In my opinion, the most ambitious and interesting new addition to Carmel is the large master planned community of the Village of WestClay (yes, that’s the affected way the developers spell it…). It appears to be built in the popular “New Urbanist” tradition although when these places are planned and built on the further reaches of the suburban sprawl frontier, I don’t know just how “New Urbanist” the developers can actually claim to be.

The Village of WestClay, which didn’t exist when the 2000 Census was taken, appears to be a rather dense and intensely planned affair. Visit their website by clicking here: Village of WestClay. I found some very interesting and unique architecture in one of WestClay’s many sub-divisions.

Here is a picture wonderfully thought out, brand new Painted Lady from one of WestClay’s brand new sub-divisions. This is a wonderful way for history to repeat itself! Of course, this is my opinion. Evidently the gaudy colors on this house have caused at least some controversy. One woman even wrote me and said this house is NOT emblematic of WestClay and implored me to steal some more conservative house pictures from the builders website. I declined.

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