First Suburbs and Challenges of Shrinkage in Warren

Abstract

First suburbs are characterized by older neighborhoods, strategic location, and well-structured infrastructure networks. First suburbs are prominent cases of shrinking with less population growth than outer suburbs between 1980 and 2010. Two-thirds of the suburbs in crisis are first suburbs and the Midwest has one of the highest proportions of first suburbs in crisis. Warren contains some of the oldest post-1950s neighborhoods; it has encountered high increase in low-income minority population and is learning to address diversity and cultural heterogeneity in a fast changing suburban population; Warren has suffered from greater income decline and higher increase in extreme suburban poverty due to restructuring of manufacturing industries; Warren is also highly fragmented in terms of metropolitan governance and regional planning in Metro Detroit.