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How the recession may remake American communities

Dante Chinni

Posted: 07.10.2009 / 7:05 AM PDT

In every community we’ve visited since January, one common thought has surfaced: The United States is changing dramatically and will look very different in 10 years.

There is not much agreement on what the future will look like. After all, the effects of the socioeconomic restructuring will be very different in different places. But a few early trends are emerging, and some of them are on display in Macomb County, Mich.

Macomb, the suburban county northeast of Detroit, has been hit hard in the economic downturn. Its unemployment rate is more than 14 percent, pushed up by the problems of the auto industry. Drive through the streets (as I did last week), and you will see many empty storefronts. Some strip malls are almost completely vacant.

Subtly and quietly, the cultural fabric of the community is changing as well: A place that has long pushed against integration and diversity is beginning to morph into something else. Increasingly, there are African-American faces in the stores and people of different ethnic backgrounds at the libraries.

A tough nut to crack

Macomb County has long been resistant to changes in its culture. The white Roman Catholic majority – many of Polish, German, Italian, and Irish extraction – has been less than accommodating to people of other backgrounds. (Full disclosure: I grew up in Macomb.)

The communities on either side of Eight Mile Road, the divider between Macomb and Detroit, have long been filled with very different populations. In 2000, Detroit was 82 percent black, while Warren, on the other side of Eight Mile Road, was 91 percent white.

But since 2000, things have begun to change.

Macomb County has seen its African-American population more than double – from 2.7 percent in 2000 to 6.8 percent in 2007. Macomb’s Asian population has gone from 2.1 percent to 3 percent, which is above the state average. And the Hispanic population has climbed slightly as well – from 1.6 percent to 2.1 percent.

Those might look like small numbers, but when you consider how small the populations were to begin with, they are big increases. And they took place in a relatively short period of time.

The signs of change are everywhere. There is a Buddhist temple on Nine Mile Road in Warren, something unthinkable 15 year ago. Further north, away from the Detroit line, there are Middle Eastern groceries.

What’s happened

The changes didn’t come overnight, of course. They’ve been in the making for some time.

For one thing, the older residents, who drew starker lines on things like race, have died or moved away. But some of what happening is economic.

For decades, tightknit communities in Macomb practiced a kind of informal redlining. When people moved, they often would not sell to minorities. They did not want to anger neighbors who said they were worried about property values.

In essence, the concern was that selling to a single minority family – particularly an African-American one – would lead to small-scale white flight in the neighborhood.

African-Americans largely steered clear of such neighborhoods to begin with.

But the current economy has changed that equation.

First, falling home values are making it harder for sellers to pick and choose between bids. When three-bedroom, two-bathroom homes can be had for less than $70,000, homeowners aren’t likely to pass on a good offer, regardless of who makes it.

Second, those falling home values make the second part of the equation – the community flight – more difficult. Pulling up stakes and moving isn’t as easy as it was even a decade ago.

The larger meaning

Not every place is Macomb County. Macomb falls into the category of “Monied ’Burbs” in Patchwork Nation, but the south of the county has a different feel from the north.

Still, that’s true of many of the inner-ring suburban counties around big urban centers.

But when the next census is done, it’s very likely that some of our “Monied ’Burb” counties will be more integrated. Some may end up being classified into a different category. Some may even lead us to identify new categories.

The shifts in Macomb County, and places like it, are not done yet. Neither are the economic stresses pushing them along.