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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

A large majority of Detroit’s upper and upper-middle class has long since decamped for Oakland County centered on the four suburbs of Birmingham, Bloomfield Township, West Bloomfield Township, and Bloomfield Hills. the Southern third of Bloomfield Hills is the wealthiest Block Group in the entire Detroit metro area with a mean household income of $386,591.

Grosse Pointe is actually made up of five separately incorporated suburbs that together are 12 square miles and technically made up of 4 cities and one village. Each of the cities has a slightly different personality and although they all have separate small shopping areas (except Grosse Pointe Shores), “The Village” in Grosse Pointe acts as the downtown for all five of the burghs. (Wikipedia) Together they had 47,752 residents in the 2000 Census. Their collective population had declined to 44,995 as estimated by the Census Bureau in 2006. Population decline in fully developed older suburbs adjacent to the central city is often found in similar places across the United States.

The Grosse Pointes population decline is exacerbated by the city of Detroit’s ongoing demographic and socio-economic collapse. The city’s population was once a mighty 1,850,000 in 1950, however by the 2000 Census the population had plunged to 951,000. The population has continued to plummet since the last Census. In 2006, the Census estimated the city’s population at approximately 834,000.The city is still hemorrhaging people at the rate of as many as 20,000 people a year. The number of abandoned housing units in the city has climbed from 38,668 to 85,951 in six years (2000-2006). This is a statistic that is mind boggling for its social and economic ramifications.

The mass exodus of middle class Non-Hispanic Whites has been followed by a similar, albeit smaller exodus of middle class Black households. There were a mere 357 (out of 37,798 in the Metro area) Non-Hispanic White households in the city of Detroit reporting an income of over $200,000 in the 2000 Census. This compared to 2,565 Black households in the central city with an income over $200,000. There were a total of 4,176 African-American households in that income bracket for the entire metro area, therefore the central city has retained 61% of the wealthiest Black households in the Metro area (Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area). There are very few Non-Hispanic Whites left to flee the city. In a short 6 year period (2000-2006), the Census estimates that the Non-Hispanic White population (of all classes) declined from 99,921 to 68,883. Non-Hispanic Whites were estimated to make up only 8.3% of Detroit’s entire population.

As non-Hispanic White families have fled the city proper, they have left some of Detroit’s most lovely historic neighborhoods to be rescued from creeping blight by Detroit’s wealthy professional nouveaux riche Black households. Nestled around the elegant Detroit Golf Club on the North Side of the city are Palmer Woods (mean household income: $133,894), Sherwood Forest ($107,559) and 125 houses around the perimeter of the Detroit Golf Club ($156,928). These three neighborhoods of beautiful houses were 78.7% African-American in 2000. However, it is important to remember that the three areas are relatively small (568 households) and combined have only 116 of Detroit’s African-American households earning over $200,000.

For the truly adventurous there is Indian Village located among the ruins of East Detroit. Indian Village is a 6 by 3 block architectural gem of a neighborhood that was originally served by streetcars. The eclectic mixture of large mansions and houses of lesser ambition are on city-sized lots in a wide array architectural styles. The prices for these Grande Dames of Gilded Age gentility would make a San Franciscan cry as unfortunately, this lovely compact neighborhood is surrounded on all sides by some very mean streets. This problem is somewhat mitigated by a pro-active Indian Village Homeowners Association that has hired its own security. The mean household income for Indian Village in 2000 was $99,381. The neighborhood of approximately 350 homes is 64.4% African-American.

The five neighborhoods of Grosse Pointe that are in the Higley 1000 makeup only 13% of the households in Detroit’s 25 neighborhoods that are on the list. Eighty-six percent of the Higley 1000 households are located in Oakland County. The only place on the list that is in the Detroit Metro area that is neither in the Birmingham-Bloomfield sector nor Grosse Pointe is the tiny village of Barton Hills (population: 335) that is located just north of Ann Arbor.

The Mean Household Income in the 2000 Census for the Grosse Pointes together was $118,541. Like any large suburban area there are pockets of great wealth nestled next to comfortable upper-middle class neighborhoods. Many spectacular mansions that were remnants of Detroit’s halcyon day of past have been torn down, but there are still thousands of older beautiful homes across all five villages. One can also find many a lower-middle class neighborhood throughout the five villages.

The Greater Grosse Pointe area has historically remained highly segregated with 95.6% of the households in the 2000 Census in the Non-Hispanic White racial category. Only 1% of the households were African-American. That is in stark contrast to the city of Detroit (83% Black) that geographically adjoins the Pointes to the west. The drive from Detroit into Grosse Pointe Park along Kercheval Avenue is a stark experience of passing from Black inner-city impoverishment to comfortable White upper-middle class life. After a few blocks of transition, Nottingham Drive announces a different world of suburban affluence. My only personal experience that rivaled this jarring socio-economic juxtaposition (and in an even more stark way) was driving from Newark into South Orange, New Jersey.

Map of Grosse Pointe Higley 1000 Neighborhoods

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in Grosse Pointe

There are Higley 1000 neighborhoods in four of the the five Grosse Pointes. Grosse Pointe Woods is the only Grosse Pointe without a representative neighborhood on the list. The five Higley 1000 neighborhoods are as segregated as the lesser parts of Grosse Pointe. Together the five Higley 1000 neighborhoods in the Grosse Pointe area were 95.2% Non-Hispanic White and a mere .7% African-American. When one factors servant households into the equation (see the Methodology section), there are very few Black households in any of Grosse Pointe’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

This pattern of racial segregation is nothing new in the industrial Midwest. It is a continuation of the racial geographical pattern found throughout this part of the United States. Segregation is equally entrenched in Chicago and Milwaukee as in Detroit. It has been characteristic of the Detroit metro area since the great African-American Northern migration began in the Twenties. The Detroit metro area has regularly topped Massey’s Index of Dissimilarity, a statistical way to measure Black/White segregation. In short, Detroit has always been highly segregated.

In the spring of 1960, a civil court suit unexpectedly shed light on how the real estate market operated in Grosse Pointe. The trial revealed that there was a screening system in effect in the Grosse Pointes that required real estate brokers to submit the name of a potential property purchase to the Grosse Pointe Property Owners Association. The Association then engaged a private detective to fill out an investigative questionnaire. As was written in the pamphlet Rights, a publication of the Anti-defamation League of B’nai B’rith ( N. Braverman, 1960), “The filled out questionnaire was then turned over by the Association to a committee of brokers which totaled up the scored points and sent it back to the Association. They made the final evaluation as to whether or not the prospective buyer had made a passing grade.” Out of a maximum of 100 points, a passing grade was based on a sliding scale for different nationalities; “Poles would pass with 55 points, Southern Europeans with 75, Jews with 85.” Negroes and “Orientals” were not even eligible; their disqualification was automatic.” The point system considered such details as whether the prospective buyer was “American” or “Americanized,” if his occupation was typical of his own race, or if either the Mr. or Mrs. was “swarthy” in appearance or spoke with an accent. The private detective was also asked to find out about the prospective buyer’s reputation and how the outside and inside of his previous home was maintained.” (How this was determined without being a peeping tom was not in the court record!). “There was a question as to whether the buyer dressed “neat” or “slovenly;” and “conservative” or “flashy.” The trial even revealed that a new form had been introduced, the “blue form,” because too many Jews were passing the existing point system. The real estate brokers were constantly tinkering with the system to keep “undesirables” out of the Grosse Pointes. The trial also revealed that the system had been adopted in 1945 and that the Grosse Pointe Homeowners Association, in league with local realtors , had been blatantly discriminating for fifteen years. (from my book, Privilege, Power, and Place: The Geography of the American Upper Class, p. 42). Today, almost 50 years later, there may be no systematic approach to Antisemitism and racism but Grosse Pointe remains a bastion of segregation that would put Selma to shame.

The five Higley 1000 neighborhoods found in the Grosse Pointe area clearly show the difficulty in defining pockets of wealth amidst a Block Group map that doesn’t always correspond to where the wealthiest residents of Grosse Pointe live. The huge mansions that line the grounds of the Country Club of Detroit are subsumed by a Block Group that would not make the Higley 1000. I therefore have made the houses around the Country Club a Higley Designated Place and estimated the mean household income ($271,500). Fortunately, as the Census breaks down racial statistics block by block, the racial makeup of this Higley Designated Place is accurate. The “neighborhoods” that make up the Higley 1000 places in the Grosse Pointe area, are actually a collection of the wealthiest Block Groups in each community. Along with the Country Club of Detroit, there are three Block Groups along the waterfront of Lake St. Clair in Grosse Pointe Farms which I have dubbed “Grosse Pointe Farms Lake Front” (mean household income: $218,375). There is also one Block Group on the lake front of Grosse Pointe ($239,297), and Grosse Pointe Shores ($226,846). There are two adjacent Block Groups in Grosse Pointe Park that made the list as a single neighborhood ($189,221).

In summary, Grosse Pointe remains a sharply defined bastion of White upper and middle class affluence surrounded by the urban degradation of the city of Detroit. Currently the future of Detroit metro region is unsettled. The continuous decline of the American automobile industry does not bode well for many parts of Michigan, including the Detroit area. As this article is written, Chrysler has announced yet another round of layoffs, Ford is in deep trouble, and GM is being challenged by Toyota for supremacy in worldwide auto sales. Michigan’s high unemployment rate and depressed economy is a big problem for some of the wealthy, many of the middle class, and most of the working class. For better or worse, the Grosse Pointes’ futures are more closely tied to the City of Detroit than the far flung burbs in Oakland County and Livingston County. It is sad to see a great city brought to its knees by racism, market forces, and governments at all levels that consider the impoverished Black population of Detroit expendable.

SRH

Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in the Princeton Area

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in the Princeton area

Princeton neatly displays the limitations of the Census’ mean household income statistics as the most elite neighborhood, the Borough’s Western Section has a mean household income ($199,823) that is substantially lower than the neighborhood that overlooks Carnegie Lake in the Township ($259,917). This is likely due to the separately recorded “households” of servants in the Western Section. The very large homes found on the premiere roads of this neighborhood (Library Street and Hodge Street) undoubtedly require staff for proper maintenance. Another factor in the lower mean household income figure found in the Western Section is that there are more people that are retired. The higher average household income figure for Carnegie Lake’s more pedestrian upscale homes benefits from homogeneity in the type of housing found in this southeastern corner of the Township.

The neighborhood I have dubbed Rosedale in Lawrence Township just to the west of the Princeton Township actually has a Princeton mailing address that serves its two huge corporate entities: the Educational Testing Service and Bristol Myers Squibb. This gives these two companies the prestige of a Princeton mailing address and a pastoral suburban campus all in one.

The Racial Make-up of the Princeton Area Higley 1000 neighborhoods

The Western Section of the Borough has no significant minority populations, but the homogenous picture changes quickly in the suburbs. Although Plainsboro Township does not have any Higley 1000 neighborhoods, it is 30.5% Asian and has many affluent nouveau riche subdivisions that were close to making the list, but just not quite wealthy enough to qualify. West Windsor Township actually managed to qualify one Block Group that I have named Edinburg Park-Cranbury Golf Course. The Asian population of this area is 23.1% Asian. This percentage of Asians is very similar to West Windsor Township’s Asian percentage overall (22.8%). The Asian populations of these two suburban townships are both overwhelmingly Chinese and Asian Indian. Plainsboro’s substantial Asian population is 2:1 Asian Indian to Chinese, whereas West Windsor’s is 50-50 split between Asian Indian and Chinese.

The northwestern corner of Princeton Township that I have named Cedar Grove also has a large number of Asian households compared to the national totals (8.7%). There are also 63 Black households in Cedar Grove (4.2%), however this number is too low to draw many conclusions from. A look at the detailed data shows an estimated 15 Black households had an income of more than $200,000. There are no significant populations of Latinos or Blacks found in any of the other Higley 1000 neighborhoods in this small sub-area of the New Jersey.

The West Suburban cluster of neighborhoods is centered on Oak Brook and Hinsdale. They are the odd couple of Chicago’s suburbs. Hinsdale (the Felix Unger of the two) is older, gracious and stately. Hinsdale’s lovely tree lined streets have been the site of a teardown demolition derby over the last 20 years with the usual local outcry. The two most elite neighborhoods of Hinsdale are the adjacent neighborhoods of Southeast Section and The Woodlands.

Oak Brook is the Oscar Madison of this duo. Oak Brook is the brain child of Paul Butler, the scion of a family that owned a large amount of land where the suburb sits today. The Butler name graces one of the suburbs many golf courses, an elementary school, and a polo ground, Oak Brook is a collection of gated communities and is the most desirable destination for Asians-Americans in the Chicago area. The gated nouveau riche development dubbed The Midwest Club is 40.1% Asian. The similar development of Trinity Lakes is 37.4% Asian. Both have among the highest concentration of wealthy Asians in the United States. The architecture of these neighborhoods tends to the ostentatious McMansion variety (an appropriate allusion as Oak Brook is the site of McDonald’s Corporate Headquarters and Hamburger University). The entire city of Oak Brook was 20.1% Asian (2000 Census). It is interesting that of Oak Brook’s Asian population, 52.5% are Indian and 20.6% are Chinese. Philippinos make up an additional 10.5% if Oak Brook’s population.

Burr Ridge answers the Question of “Where to Build your McMansion when Oak Brook is Built-out?”

Don’t want to teardown a house in Hinsdale or Clarendon Hills? But still want to build that 10,000 square foot trophy house? Burr Ridge is the place for you! The two neighborhoods of Burr Ridge in the Higley 1000 have relatively large Asian populations. Palisades-Oakridge Estates is 14.6% Asian and Devon-Lakewood is 15.7% Asian.

Map of Burr Ridge

View Larger Map of Palisades-Oak Ridge & Devon-Lakewood Neighborhoods

The appearance that wealthy Asians are attracted to gated developments of new homes in the suburbs provides an interesting future research topic for urban geographers.

The 17 neighborhoods in the West Suburban cluster were 86.2% Non-Hispanic Whites and 10.0% Asian. Black (1.6%) and Hispanic (1.2%) household numbers are insignificant. There were 7,470 households in this cluster or 16.4% of Chicago’s Higley 1000 total households.

Beyond the core Hinsdale-Oak Brook cluster there are several noteworthy West Suburban outliers. One of this author’s favorites is River Forest’s central section, a neighborhood graced by eclectic homes from the early parts of the 20th Century. Formerly the favorite of solid citizens as well as Mafia dons, River Forest’s homes have been lovingly maintained. Many of the homes in River Forest have been remodeled and expanded as the downside of the eclectic architecture of the Twenties are small bathrooms, small closets, and small kitchens.

Map of River Forest and Oak Park’s Frank Lloyd Wright Neighborhood

View Larger Map of River Forest Central and Frank Lloyd Wright Neighborhood

Oak Park: A Frank Lloyd Wright Tour de Force

Another noteworthy neighborhood that just missed the Higley 1000 is the core of a collection of Frank Lloyd Wright designed homes in Oak Park. The Block Group that has the Wright homes had a mean household income of $184,868 in 2000, placing it 1004th in the nation.

One may take a variety of tours sponsored by the Frank Lloyd Wright Association located on the Southern edge of this neighborhood. Although Oak Park has a fairly large African-American population, few are found in the Frank Lloyd Wright neighborhood.

Map of the Concentration of African-Americans in Oak Park, Illinois (Block by Block Basis)

In the late Sixties, Oak Park became the center of controversy when the city began a reverse steering program as realtors were trained to steer newly arriving African-Americans to Non-Hispanic White neighborhoods through the Oak Park Housing Center. In spite of the best efforts of the city, Blacks remain clustered in apartment buildings along the city’s Eastern border with Chicago, Austin Boulevard. Although the city as a whole was 22.4% Black in the 2000 Census, the Frank Lloyd Wright neighborhood had a mere 1.7% African-American households.

South Suburban Chicago

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 neighborhoods in South Suburban Chicago

There are only two Higley 1000 neighborhoods in the southern half of Chicagoland: the area around the Flossmoor Country Club and a subdivision adjacent to the Prestwick Country Club in exurban Frankfort. The households around the Flossmoor Country Club were 17.1% Black in the 2000 Census, the highest percentage in the Chicago area by quite a large degree. The second largest percentage of African-Americans (6.3%) is found in the small West Suburban Oak Brook subdivision of Ginger Creek.

I came across an interesting Chicago Sun-Times article from the archives (August 15, 1972) that listed the status of 200 Chicago suburbs by ranking them on four statistics: percentage college graduates; percentage of families with incomes over $25,000 (that’s not a typo!); median family income; and median years of school. What is striking about the listing is that Olympia Fields, a suburb just south of Flossmoor was ranked 4th and Flossmoor was ranked 7th.

By the 2000 Census, there were no neighborhoods in Olympia Fields in the Higley 1000. The Olympia Fields Country Club neighborhood is 51.9% Black, however with a mean household income of $133,210, it would not be in qualify for the second thousand wealthiest neighborhoods. Graymoor is a small subdivision to the east of the Olympia Fields Country Club and has a mean household income of $169,321. Graymoor’s 143 households were 35.6% Black in the 2000 Census. It is always important to remember that the margin of error in very small neighborhoods is wide. It is also important to remember that the reason I have chosen to make the data base 1,000 neighborhoods strong was to counteract this problem.

Chicago is endowed with a large number of beautiful and expensive downtown neighborhoods, but only one single Block Group in the middle of Lincoln Park has a mean household income that is high enough to make the Higley 1000. Even the Lincoln Park block that was christened the “wealthiest block in Chicago” by Forbes Magazine in August of 2007, does not qualify for the Higley 1000. As the block in question has only recently undergone widespread demolition to make way for the construction of multi-lot pleasure palaces for our new Gilded Age, it will undoubtedly make the list after the 2010 Census.

Forbes may salivate over the nouveau mansions of Lincoln Park, but any self respecting Chicagoan knows that the real center of Chicago’s elite is found in the Gold Coast. The luxurious single block of East Lake Shore Drive, North Lake Shore Drive from Oak Street to North Avenue, and Astor Street are unquestionably the most elite of the city’s neighborhoods. Surprisingly, the Block Group that covers this area does not have a high enough mean household income ($180,093) to qualify for the Higley 1000.

The reason for this relatively “low” mean household income in the Gold Coast is found in the very density and complexity associated with urban neighborhoods. For every condominium tower that features multi-million dollar units in this area, there are massive high rises that bring the mean household income down to more pedestrian levels. For those familiar with Chicago, 1350, 1360, and 1400 Lake Shore Drive are examples of massive rental-turned-condo high rises’ that subvert the mean household incomes of this plush neighborhood.

Racial Integration in Chicago’s Central Neighborhoods

Defining the geographical boundaries of Chicago’s central neighborhoods is a challenge to any Geographer since the city’s rich history of urban sociological research has resulted in many definitions. After much research using Census Tracts and Block Group boundaries, I have settled on the eleven neighborhoods found on the map below.

A Map of Chicago’s Central Neighborhoods

View Larger Map of Higley 1000 Neighborhoods in the City of Chicago

The Racial Makeup of the Neighborhoods

City of Chicago Neighborhoods Racial Makeup

The racial makeup of the City of Chicago households at the time of the 2000 Census was 42.0% Non-Hispanic White, 33.8% African-American, 17.9% Latino, and 4.2% Asian. The eleven wealthy central neighborhoods are radically different in racial makeup: 83.4% White, 5.7% Black, 3.5% Latino, and 5.7% Asian. Although there are significant differences among the elite central city neighborhoods, none of them come close to matching the racial diversity of the rest of the city.

I have rank ordered the neighborhoods by populations starting with the very large Lincoln Park Neighorhood. Lincoln Park has over 40% of all of the households in my sample and although it has many sub-neighborhoods (e.g. Sheffield Neighbors, the Old Town Triangle), I have chosen to lump them in one unit. Lincoln Park is only slightly more integrated than Chicago’s elite suburbs on the North Shore. A mere 2.5% of Lincoln Park’s households are African-American. The only city neighborhood that has a lower percentage is the Gold Coast (2.4% African-American).

It is interesting that the four central city neighborhoods that have the largest percentage of African-American households are relatively “new”. The Dearborn Park neighborhood was 30.1% African-American in 2000. Dearborn Park was built just south of the Loop in two phases (1977 and 1988). Although the percentage of African-Americans is high compared to other central city neighborhoods, it is important to remember that this neighborhood is quite small.

River West (13.4% Black) and River North (12.1%) are new loft neighborhoods that have been created out old factories and and office buildings as well as new high rise construction. The neighborhood that is sometimes referred to as Lake Shore East consists solely of high rises, most of which have been built within the last 20 years.

Two neighborhoods that have a significant number of Asian households are Streeterville, a high rise neighborhood along the lake, East of Michigan Avenue (13.4% Asian) as well as the aforementioned “new” loft neighborhood of River West (10.3%).

The only neighborhood with a significant Latino presence is the Loop (9.5%). At the time of the 2000 Census, there were few households in Chicago’s central business district as only 1,025 were counted. Since the last Census, office conversions and new construction have changed the face of the Loop with a much wider array of housing choices.

As to whether all of the new high rises. lofts, and townhouses will significantly alter the racial makeup of Chicago’s central neighborhoods will be of great interest. Virtually all of the new construction is at the high end of the market, most notably the 1,200 unit, 2,000 foot Chicago Spire under construction in Streeterville. The Higley1000 sends its condolences to the real estate agents trying to sell 1,200 units that run up to $45 million in this market! Where are those Russian Oligarchs when you need them?

One could almost consider the Barrington Area as an annex to the North Shore. New upscale development was blocked to the north along the lakefront by downscale North Chicago and Waukegan, therefore it moved west. The Barrington area (as I have defined it) stretches from Long Grove on the east to Barrington Hills in the west and is located primarily on the rolling meadows and forests of southern Lake County. This area, with a few exceptions, is nouveau riche and filled with upscale subdivisions of McMansions.

The Barrington name has cache and has proliferated across the landscape in a series of separately incorporated suburbs: North Barrington, South Barrington, Lake Barrington, Barrington Hills, and the original little farming community that started it all, Barrington itself. The lower-middle class suburb of Hoffman Estates even briefly entertained renaming itself East Barrington at one point to gain some illusory prestige.

Although the wealthiest neighborhood in the Barrington area is the gated Wynstone Golf Course community, the reigning dowager of wealth and old money is Barrington Hills. Wynstone consists of huge new homes built around a Jack Nicklaus designed golf course in the village of North Barrington. The fact that Wynstone has a significantly higher mean household income than Barrington Hills, is yet another example of how parvenu homogeneity can trump old money diversity in the Higley 1000.

If Wynstone’s passion is golf, Barrington Hills is equestrian paradise. The suburb is huge and its 28 square miles covers four counties. The population is only 4,000 due to extensive public park lands and five acre zoning throughout the village. The Riding Club of Barrington Hills and the Fox River Valley Pony Club are local institutions and horses are the focal point of many of the residents lives. It is quite amazing that there is no country club in the corporate limits of Barrington Hills.

View Larger Map of Barrington Hills neighborhood

There are 11 Higley 1000 neighborhoods in the Barrington area with 21.1% of the suburban Chicago households. Similarly to the North Shore, the population is overwhelmingly Non-Hispanic White (93.1%). The only suburb in the Barrington area that has any racial diversity at all is South Barrington. This suburb, which seems to be a favorite of sports stars, has a relatively large percentage of Asian households (14.4%), however the 11 neighborhoods together have only 4.3% Asian householders. Like the North Shore, the number of Blacks and Hispanics is statistically insignificant.